


Moncrieff

by nagapdragon



Category: Sherlock (TV), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Copycat Terrorists, F/M, How Do I Tag, I don't know, M/M, Multi, Post-Skyfall, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Pre-Skyfall, Q is a Holmes, this just happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-08-19
Packaged: 2018-02-07 14:46:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 63,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1902975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagapdragon/pseuds/nagapdragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft's first big break comes with a price, a price that will change the lives of all three Holmes brothers forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You Wouldn't Believe the Christmas Dinners

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, all! Come visit me at nagapdragon.tumblr.com- I'd love to hear from you!

He kept one old photo, for sentiment’s sake.   
It was a win-win situation. He needed to be rid of a threat to the security of the realm, one who had skills difficult to combat. He could break into any computer, doing what he wished and leaving no trace of his presence. He was a legend in certain circles and a horror story in others, a pseudonym barely hiding a man who craved recognition. If he could step back in to the shadows, take what he wanted and slip out without the temptation of leaving his mark, without bragging about it, truly be a ghost in the machine, then his best people would not have been able to track down the culprit.  
He never asked who, when they said they found the hacker who went by Moncrieff. The only other name ever associated with the hacker was Cecily, signed on some message boards with reports of Moncrieff’s work. It was Christmas dinner, sitting at Mummy’s cozy little table in the cottage she and Father moved to after insisting that he take over the family manor, when his team called him with the news that they’d found Moncrieff and were ready to set up an extraction if he would give the order.   
He congratulated himself on a job well done, one of his first major jobs since he settled in to his position in the government and returned to the family. He was twenty-nine, his brilliance allowing him such a swift rise through the government. Sherlock was twenty-two and had stayed clean for the month before on Mummy’s wishes, insisting that it was a phase, as he understood it people had those and wasn’t that what Mummy always wanted, for him to be like boring people? Algernon was nineteen, still having trouble deciding which branch of engineering appealed to him the most, with Mummy indulging him because his indecision was such a nice change from Mycroft and Sherlock’s sharp focus on one thing and one thing only.   
Mummy was just clearing the dinner dishes and setting Father to serving dessert- Mycroft’s favorite German chocolate cake, the pudding that Sherlock denies he likes but eats massive portions of anyways, and a platter of chocolate chip cookies made to Algernon’s favorite recipe.   
They came without any warning or any big fuss, just as they were taught to. Leave the dramatics to MI6, he told his team, and get the job done. There is no reason to cause a scene when you can take someone peacefully, but do not underestimate your opponents.   
Anthea rang the doorbell. Mummy sent Sherlock to answer it, and he came back with scathing deductions and a pair of cuffs around his wrists. For a long moment, longer than it should have taken him, he didn’t put the pieces together. He almost started arguing it, that they must be mistaken, that Sherlock has always been mostly uninterested in computers and certainly doesn’t have the skill to be Moncrieff, that he was only interested in using the internet to assist in his deductions and had Algy do even that half the time because he couldn’t be bothered.  
Algernon.  
The click of the handcuffs as Anthea cuffed his youngest brother, followed by the scrape of the key as they released Sherlock, accompanied his realization. He can’t even really call it a deduction, though all the relevant details he wasn’t looking at flood his memories now. The late nights at any family event, trying to find a midnight snack that Sherlock hadn’t contaminated with the steady background of Algernon typing. The Importance of Being Earnest, which Algernon wrote an critique of for class that went on to become highly acclaimed, about Algernon Moncrieff and his love, Cecily.   
“Apologies for disrupting your dinner, Mrs. Holmes,” Anthea said with a nod of acknowledgement as two of his finest officers led Algernon away without protest.   
She left him to break the news to his family, that Algernon was the hacker he had been chasing and a danger to Queen and Country. Mummy wept and Father left the room to stand at the window, staring out over Mummy’s gardens. Sherlock, always closer to Algy than Mycroft due to their ages, raged against it as night fell and then disappeared back into London. Mycroft didn’t see him in person again until he had Sherlock put in rehab. Their relationship was damaged, he sometimes believes irreparably so, by the idea that he could so betray his own brother.   
And as for Mycroft himself, he went to his office, the luxurious trappings feeling cold and heartless, like he was bought by the British Government to be the British Government, and decided what to do with his brother. He could be lenient, give Algy another chance, and lose everything he worked for and probably earn quite a bit of surveillance for his entire family. He could hand Algy’s case over to someone who would have him made an example of as a warning to others, absolving himself of any guilt. Or he could find a way to punish his brother, a way acceptable to the British Government that he, in his downtime as Mycroft Holmes, would have to live with.   
Seven days later, Mycroft Holmes’ first official act of the new year was to destroy the hacker Moncrieff, wipe the name Algernon Holmes from all records, and bury the man who was his brother in the depths of the government where his every move could be watched and he could become a useful asset eventually, if he knew what was good for him, because Mycroft could not pull something like this off to save his life a second time.   
Across the channels where whispers dictate the rise and fall of bureaucrats went the word of how Mycroft Holmes destroyed his own brother without a second thought for being a mere threat to the Crown, not even having undertaken any treacherous acts, and back came an unprecedented promotion as his age and a reputation for coldness. As she had from his third posting, by which time he had realized the value of a trusted PA who undercuts her own capabilities to be underestimated, Anthea came with him.   
They never spoke of her arresting his brother at Christmas dinner again.


	2. Your Loss Would Break My Heart

Long after everyone else went to bed, Sherlock sneaks into Algae’s room and sits on his chair, the one in the corner where he’s always sat with his brother. It was there back when this was Algae’s nursery, where he sat on Mummy’s lap and pointed at the pictures mutely while she read from science and math textbooks to them both. Even then, Algae looked more like Sherlock than Mycroft, and with the age gap, he and Algae were thick as thieves.   
He taught Algae everything he learned in school in that chair, gave condescending advice before giving in and helping Algae with his homework, and deduced which kids at school were being horrible to Algae and deserved a scathing deduction or two to chase them away. He sat here and justified his cocaine use to Algae, promising to give Algae all the power when he’s here at home- his stash is here, where Mycroft would never think to look for it.   
He trusted Algae with everything. Mycroft was always a little cold, taking Mummy’s lessons on decorum and engraving them on his heart, but he and Algae feel everything so deeply. He can only ever really express everything in one of two ways: standing at the window with his violin with Algae on the piano behind him, filling the gaps in an unspoken dance of songs sliding into songs sliding into haphazard compositions that they make up as they go or in hushed conversations with him, sneaking in late at night to know that at least someone feels the way he feels, where every snub is a knife and he’s bleeding out.  
Why didn’t Algae tell him?  
He’ll never see his brother again. He saw that in Mycroft’s face, in the triumph after he took that phone call sliding into horror sliding into a deep sadness. Mycroft will have to sentence Algae to death for treason, that’s the only reason his people would have come for him without mind for publicity or location. There will probably be a funeral, some story of a tragic accident and a private affair in which they bury no coffin, just put a headstone in the family graveyard next to the two empty plots that wait for Mummy and Father.   
Clumsily, because he tries to respect Algae’s disapproval and not use this stash, not use in the house, he slides under Algae’s bed and reaches for the box hidden underneath. This is his nice set, not the trash set he has to replace every time Mycroft abuses government resources to raid his junkie flat. He has a nicer one, but he keeps that one to prove to Mummy and Father that he’s somewhat respectable.   
He doesn’t even take the time to appreciate his nice pieces, the solution a fresh one that he kept on his person to keep it away from Mycroft, before the cocaine takes away the pain and the desperation of losing the one most like him, the only one who understands him.   
Father comes to Algae’s room when Sherlock isn’t in his own. He tells Mycroft and Mummy in a hushed voice, then leaves to the library, disappointed in his new youngest child. Algae did that so much better, being the precious darling. Sherlock’s just the clever fuck-up, clever enough to hide most of it.   
Mycroft shouts and Sherlock throws him into a wall. Mummy stands in the doorway, her calm broken as she wrings her hands in distress, silent tears dripping down her face.   
He leaves, after that, stumbling back to his flat without really knowing how he got there. Let Mycroft spy if he wishes, Sherlock decides. He doesn’t care, not any more.  
Sentiment is a deficit found only on the losing side.  
He won’t be on the losing side, not any longer.   
There is no room for sentiment. Algae will take Sherlock’s heart with him to his grave, and it is better off there.  
Tonight, he will suffer in his emptied-out flat, sanitized by the same people who will kill Algae and make his body vanish. Tomorrow, he will do whatever he has to so that he can stay high until it stops hurting, even if it means going to the streets to hide from Mycroft.  
Tomorrow, he won’t feel a thing.


	3. The Ghost in MI6

In the depths of MI6, Major Boothroyd welcomes a teenager to their midst, allowed to work on gadgets but not on computers at his discretion. MI6 transfers his credits to an internal program, and if his name is mysteriously wiped out in the process, replaced only by his MI6 ID number, nobody comments.  
He goes by a series of nicknames for years. Nobody questions when he doesn’t offer a real name.  
“Bones, you’re summoned to the Major’s office.” Cait, one of the older techs who serves as Boothroyd’s right hand when R is out of the country delivering tech to agents, leans over his computer, casting a shadow over his screen. It took two years for him to earn computer access again. It was a gift upon his graduation from whatever university MI6 was sending his coursework to. They didn’t give him a real diploma and he didn’t ask.  
He scowls back at Cait. He likes her most of the time, but she’s part of the crew who thinks he works too much for his age and needs to eat and sleep more. He doesn’t exactly have much of a life outside MI6, with being a non-entity and all, but Cait tends to think he ought to behave his age. At 24, he’s spent over a fifth of his life with MI6, dedicating his life to his second chance.  
He appreciates being alive and for the most part, free. He’s been allowed, in the last three years, to slowly reestablish an Internet presence. Moncrieff may still be a legend in that world, but his other four psuedonyms are fairly widely respected by now. Boothroyd thought it would be good for him to slowly make his way back in to that world so he could help combat cyberterrorism, so he now works under different names for different tasks. Pathos builds impenetrable firewalls around the British Government and beefs up all of their security systems. Logos deals in information gathering, but doesn’t actually get his hands dirty. Ethos gathers other hackers to him, keeping tabs on the hacking world and subtly keeping the legend of Moncrieff alive. And, when Boothroyd allows him to, Chaos wrecks systems from the inside out.  
“You know I don’t like the nickname,” he argues, logging out of his computer.  
“And you know that it fits. You should have made your screen name Skeleton. Would’ve fit a little better.”  
“Cait,” he complains.  
“Oh, enough of that, Bones. I’m going to go get lunch while you’re in your meeting and you will eat all of it unless you want me to report you to M.”  
“And what could you possibly report me to M for?”  
“Misuse of MI6 assets. That’s a serious offense.”  
He sighs heavily, burying his face in his hands. “Put that on my record and I’ll be out of here and in an early grave.”  
“You’re working yourself in to an early grave.”  
He rolls his eyes. “I have a meeting.”  
He grumbles on the way to Boothroyd’s office. He just wants to stay inconspicuous, play with his gadgets, and generally do work that will make Mycroft proud. He would really like to make Mummy and Father proud, but they don’t know where he disappeared to after his arrest. Only Mycroft knows that, and he’s sure his brother is watching from the shadows.  
“Major Boothroyd, here on your summons.” He cracks the door of Boothroyd’s office open to call in, then leans against the wall outside.  
“Come on in, Bones.”  
He sighs. He’s never getting away from that one if Boothroyd uses it. That’s almost as bad as if M used it.  
Major Boothroyd’s office is like the rest of Q-Branch- disorganized, way outdated in terms of tech, and yet cozy. Where in regular offices, the walls would have pictures of family and grandchildren, Boothroyd has his walls covered in pictures of Q-Branch. There are pictures of them at various MI6 social events- paintball, the summer barbeque, pool parties, bowling- and pictures of them all at their workspaces, doubled over keyboards with steaming mugs of caffeine and surrounded by tiny pieces that they’re trying to assemble into the next big gadget for the field agents. Those pictures cover two walls and are wedged in frames between books on his shelves. The last wall is a memorial wall, pictures in heavy black frames with names scripted across the bottom.  
It is sparsely populated, with only seventeen photographs on it. Boothroyd only puts up the photos of Q-Branch members who perish in the course of action. Nine of them were killed in a non-accidental gas leak twenty years ago, the other eight in various field missions. He knew two of them. They died in his first two years at MI6, one caught in an explosion while trying to disarm a bomb attached to a Double-0 agent and the other garroted on his way to deliver tech in the field.  
After those two, M imposed even bigger regulations on allowing Q-Branch members out in the field, only in the simplest situations without an escorting agent.  
The Major’s normally cheerful demeanor is replaced by a deep sorrow, staring at a black-framed photograph on his desk with a silver Sharpie in his hand. His face falls. Someone- someone he worked closely with, someone from Q-Branch- is dead.  
“Who is it?”  
Major Boothroyd lowers his Sharpie to the frame, writing slowly in what he knows is the man’s neatest script, the same script as on all the other photos. He doesn’t respond until after he takes a seat, handing the photo over to him.  
A pretty blonde woman stares back at him, laughing at someone cropped out of the frame. Laughing at him, he remembers, on the day they held a miniature graduation for him. Q-Branch pulled a lot of bits and bobs out of their closets, putting him in someone’s oversized graduation robes and someone else’s cap, even managing to find an orange engineering tassel in someone’s closet. He looked a fool, but they all had fun. Elena and Joe, heads of Catering, brought in his favorite treats and a couple of the Double-0s were convinced to sneak alcohol past Security over the week prior in return for the newest tech. R handed him his mock diploma and switched his tassel, Major Boothroyd gave a little speech and shook his hand, and the rest of Q-Branch either sat in their doctoral robes where the professors would sit or sat in the crowd, cheering. They even had some other members of MI6 in attendance, though he’s pretty sure most of them were there for the afterparty. M even showed up to say a few words, though she disappeared to her office well before the alcohol came out.  
He doesn’t need to look at the script to recognize her, but he looks anyways. He never knew her real name. She’d given it up before he came to MI6, and as such was one of the most sympathetic to his transition to being nameless.  
Maria Isobel Delacroix- “R”  
“No,” he murmurs. “She was supposed to be gone for an afternoon. Drop a new communicator off with 002 in a nice restaurant across London, finish her supper there, and return here to work on the upgraded gun project with me tomorrow morning.”  
“Someone must have followed 002. He got away with a graze across his shoulder, but they got another shot off. Hit her in the lung. 002 managed to get her out, but he didn’t have a chance to get her to a hospital.” Major Boothroyd takes the picture back, crossing the room to hang it on the Q-Branch memorial wall.  
“Is that why you needed me? If it was another patron, I could chase their trail across the Internet, but not if they just showed up and shot.”  
Boothroyd sits back down, folding his hands. “You’re brilliant, Bones, and well-liked in the Branch. Everyone thinks that, no matter the circumstances, it was a stroke of good luck that had you joining us and we would love to keep you forever.”  
“That’s nice to hear, sir.”  
“I do not often step back in to my role as Q, preferring to be the Major, but in this instance it is necessary. Q-Branch agent, birth name redacted, known as Bones within the Branch, I would name you R. Are you willing to cast aside your other identity and live as R?”  
He stares at the Major. Nobody has ever been named R without at least fifteen years in the Branch, and very few people join Q-Branch as early as he did. This is unprecedented.  
He tells Major Boothroyd as much.  
The Major laughs. “And what about your presence here hasn’t been controversial? I spoke to Caitlyn and the other higher-ups of Q-Branch, and they agreed with my decision.”  
He sighs. “I’ll take it, Major. I’m already nameless. You just have to convince the rest of the Branch to stop giving me silly nicknames.”  
“I can’t do that,” the Major answers with a sad smile, “but I will have all of your things moved to your new office tonight. Get back to work, R. We have a meeting with M in two hours.”


	4. The Game is On

Every once in a while, criminals vanish into the streets, only to turn up on the doorstep of Scotland Yard, wrists wrapped in duct tape, with a typed note stuck on their shirt detailing all of their crimes and exactly what to say to get a full confession. Occasionally, there is also evidence in bags.   
Sherlock’s handiwork, of course. He started addressing the notes to one DI Lestrade, the only one who took his gifts seriously, and even skirting the edges of Lestrade’s crime scenes with rude gestures to the CCTV cameras that track his progress across the city. Mycroft can’t interfere without Sherlock’s consent, not by the terms of their agreement. And he isn’t giving it.   
Father holds the signed copy of their contract in a safe-deposit box. Mummy doesn’t know that Mycroft agreed to provide the money to keep Sherlock in drugs and keep him off the streets, if only just barely, so long as Sherlock submits to regular blood tests to make sure he’s being ‘safe’ and that he doesn’t kill himself.   
He’s thirty-two now. Algae’s been gone for a full decade, as of this Christmas. There was no grave, no funeral, not even a marker. Mummy looks at the third bedroom sadly when she thinks nobody is looking, but Father and Mycroft act as if Algae never existed.   
He would hate them all, if he still had feelings. Sociopath, the aid workers who come down into the streets and try to clean them all up say, freak.   
High-functioning sociopath, he snaps back, deducing the tragedies in their past that led them to try to clean up the streets in vicious little words not fitting of his vocabulary, thank you very much. And then he slinks off to find his next hit.   
His flat has been cleaned, for all that manages, and there is fresh food in the ancient fridge. Mycroft’s work, of course, but he’ll bring the people who have helped him here to feed them, let them get washed up and sleep in a bed and take from the closet that Mycroft keeps refilling without touching any of it himself. Guilt or insanity, he doesn’t know which Mycroft’s incessant attempts to help him are.   
He traces a finger along the anatomy textbook from their childhood, Algae’s copies of The Importance of Being Earnest and The Hobbit and The Complete Works of Plato. Algae’s tastes were always a little more voracious in his reading material. Mycroft reads anything to keep up on the political world and get the next edge, Sherlock reads about chemistry and physics and anatomy and all the other sciences with the occasional maths textbook thrown in to keep Mummy pleased, but Algae would’ve read anything.   
He wanders to a crime scene to avoid the melancholy, watching the forensics expert find nothing of importance when it is so clearly obvious that the man was balancing three lovers who found out about each other and decided to make him pay for his infidelity and went a little too far. One has children, another is a medical professional, so the third will turn herself in to protect the others.   
He knows what, but he doesn’t know why. Sentiment. That much is behind him.   
He doesn’t know what moves him to step around the sergeant at the police tape, slipping unnoticed in the way of the homeless between two police cars to sidle up next to DI Lestrade.  
“When a woman turns herself in as soon as this hits the news, claiming she did it, look through her recent acquaintances for a woman with children and a nurse. Two other women, mind you.”  
“Who the hell are you?” Lestrade turns, reaching automatically for the gun. No, the handcuffs. Definitely the handcuffs.  
“An interested party,” he says, slinking back to the tape. “The name’s Holmes.”


	5. Happy Birthday, Have a Grenade

For his thirtieth birthday, Q-Branch throws a massive party.   
This isn’t unusual anymore. They are his family now and they do their best to show it. MI6 recruits orphans for field agents, but Q-Branch and the other non-field branches are different. He’s a rarity without a family to go to.   
Well, without going to the family who raised him or a family of his own. He does have the Branch.  
This time, his actual birthday happens to fall in the middle of a long stretch of peace, long enough that everyone is getting antsy with so little to do. Outside of Q-Branch, they also think he’s been here for a decade now, if they know. He wasn’t allowed out of the Branch for his first year.   
It has gotten out of hand already, and it won’t even be his birthday for another four hours. The Double-0s challenged everyone to Mario Kart, which Q-Branch trounced them at, leading to an increasingly ridiculous set of drinking game rules to slowly even the playing field for them. Catering has gone overboard with food on every table, everyone’s favorites unless R doesn’t like them, and a beverage bar organized by alcohol content that is constantly being reorganized as various agents ‘accidentally’ spill bottles of vodka.   
And by agents, he means 006. He likes Trevelyan and all- he and 001 were the first of the Double-0s to accept him as R and they regularly kidnap him for drinks or tea, depending on who does the kidnapping. Tonight, Trevelyan is possible intentionally losing in the game of strip Mario Kart despite doing better ever since he took his shirt off and starting lounging provocatively in his opponents’ personal space.   
He does a quick scan of the room, making sure none of the Double-0s are making too much trouble. He intends to enjoy his birthday, not spend it cleaning up behind overgrown children. He does enough of that on a daily basis.  
Alfred Frederic Johansson, 001, is sitting around a table set for afternoon tea despite the hour with M and Boothroyd joining him. At eighty-one, he can look like he’d be blown over in a stiff breeze, but he’s still one of MI6’s most dangerous because he is brilliant and ruthless. He’s often sent to work with children because they’d fear the other agents, but not the dotty old man who gives them candy and garrotes his enemies while they sing nursery rhymes and turn away.  
002, 005, and 009 are giving each other mani-pedis sprawled across a couch that he recognizes from the Double-0 lounge. A few other agents scatter away at an angry growl, revealing 004 tied firmly to the couch while they discuss how to paint his nails. Amelia Elles, 002, is Cait’s niece and therefore afraid of absolutely nobody within the organization. 005 and 009 are twins, often sent on missions together so the enemy believes there to be one agent present, not two. Lyra and Viola are identical, made more identical with Medical’s help, and both sets of fingerprints and DNA link back to a single cover identity.   
He feels a little bad for 004, a boy not much older than himself who is fresh out of being the top agent below the Double-0s and hasn’t adjusted to his new role quite yet. R hasn’t even learned his name yet. Until he reaches three years as a Double-0, he’s disposable, unlikely to survive the abrupt change in lifestyle.   
For instance, learning not to annoy too many Double-0s. All of them turn against anyone who insults 001. The ladies are allowed to insult each other on certain topics but not the rest of them, and when angered are usually angered as a group. Everyone teases 006, but push him too far and he’ll turn 007 and himself against you and the rest of the Double-0s will follow out of a desire to stay on the winning side. 003 and 008 are the most forgiving, though they demand apologies first and it is ridiculously difficult to break their poker face and see when they’re upset.   
R recognizes the knots on his right wrist as a modified version of sailor knots, courtesy of 006. They aren’t the perfect knots 007 prefers, but the two have been flatmates for ages and Trevelyan’s picked up a few things.   
003 is at the buffet, flirting with a few of his techs, while 008 is lurking over 007’s shoulder in front of the screen, laughing as one of the quieter members in Q-Branch jumps up, does a celebratory dance, and taunts Trevelyan over losing another round. He doesn’t know where 007 is, but trusts that M and Boothroyd can keep him in hand better than anyone else.   
“R, come join us,” Lyra and Viola call from the couch. He joins them, picking out a decent shade of green and offering up his hands.   
Tonight has the ability to be either absolutely brilliant or absolutely terrible, and it’s no longer his problem to deal with. Cait and Danielle can be in charge.   
“Green, really? It doesn’t go with your cardigan,” Amelia comments, drawing flowers and skulls on 004’s hot pink nails.   
“Pink doesn’t go with 004’s suit, either, but that didn’t stop you.”  
“Yes, but we like you. We don’t like him, not right now.”  
004 groans. R smiles, settling into the couch with his current favorite Double-0s. They’re getting the best tech on their next missions, if he has anything to say about it.


	6. Overdose

“You’re done, Sherlock.”  
Mycroft sits in the chair at his bedside, suit barely rumpled, with a look in his eyes that Sherlock hasn’t seen since Christmas thirteen years ago.   
“Go away, Mycroft. You’re supposed to be leaving me alone.”  
“Clause 19, Paragraph B. In the case that you endanger your own life according to a certain set of criteria, which your doctor assures me you have now met, the contract is null and void. You said you could avoid an overdose, Sherlock.”  
Sherlock rolls over as best he can without yanking out his IV. Last time he was in the hospital and tried that one, Mycroft had him strapped down.   
“I was perfectly safe.”  
“You’re done, Sherlock. Six months in rehab, and then a lovely lady who you helped in Florida has offered to rent you a flat at very reasonable conditions, given your proclivities towards explosions. One of my agents will lives with you full-time until such a time as you can find a flatmate who isn’t a drug addict nor likely to become one.”  
Sherlock sulks in silence until Anthea comes in, pressing a kiss to Mycroft’s cheek as she hands him a file. Details for his rehab, clearly.   
If Lestrade lets him help more, it will be worth it. He can chase off any flatmates Mycroft tries to foist on him. They’ll all be spies, anyways, and Mycroft will pay them to keep an eye on him.   
Good thing he’s a terrible person to live with.


	7. Living as R, or the Problem with 006

“Boothroyd to R, over.”  
R sighs, saving his work and thanking himself for heavily annotating his code. He should have taken out his earpiece if he wanted to work in peace. Boothroyd would have found someone else to fix things if R wasn’t easy to reach. Eight years as R, and he still feels like he’s disappointing Boothroyd when he doesn’t finish his work and disappointing Boothroyd when he takes out his earpiece in order to finish his work.  
Looking like another late night. Maybe Elena can be convinced to order something absolutely terrible from takeout for him instead of making endless sandwiches and coffee.  
“R, over.”  
“You’re on comms for 006. I have to deal with the mess in Istanbul. I told M we should have sent two Double-0s on this one instead of just 007 with a few agents for backup. Boothroyd out.”  
R sighs, switching from the Q-Branch channel over to Double-0 comms, running through the four layers of passwords to access 006’s comms. He’s out on a honeypot mission, R reads off his screen, which is a spectacularly bad idea.  
“Cait,” he calls out his office door. Her office is next to his and either she or Danielle will come running with cookies, tea, and unsolicited advice. For the most part, they actually rule Q-Branch with iron wills. R has a pet theory that, as no-nonsense women who make everyone’s well being their business, they’ve survived so long in Q-Branch because nobody dares cross them. Not even the Double-0s. He’s not sure he wants to know how.  
“Look at you, R. Still too skinny. And is that the sandwich Danielle made for you this morning- with her own hands, might I add- still sitting on your desk?”  
“Maybe. Listen, why is 006 out on a honeypot mission? Didn’t M put down an edict banning him from doing that unless one of the other Double-0s is willing to suffer through his comms?”  
“Only when Bond is on his comms, since he’s the only one unfazed by Trevelyan’s comments, yes. This is extenuating circumstances. The plan was to send Bond on this mission and send Trevelyan to Istanbul, but Bond’s seduction technique has a lot to do with that silver tongue of his.”  
R frowns. He’s still not dealing with Bond directly. Boothroyd enjoys the man’s company, so he takes care of Bond exclusively. He’s heard rumors, though, and keeps meaning to tune in on his comms one day to try and learn more about the enigmatic agent.  
“And why is that a problem?”  
“Target is completely deaf, but she’s got an eye for the pretty ones. Bond’s silver tongue wouldn’t work on her, but Trevelyan’s technique is entirely because he’s a piece of art that everyone wants a taste of.”  
R can’t argue with the logic. What he isn’t looking forwards to is announcing the change in comms to 006. He respects Boothroyd like a father and holds his tongue, but not with R.  
“Thanks, Cait.”  
“You can thank me by eating that sandwich and the plate I bring in to you. I’ve seen your plans for renovating Q-Branch, R, and they require both Danielle and I to sign off on them. They won’t even be proposed to Boothroyd without our say-so.” She leaves without making the threat, but it hangs in the air anyways.  
“006, R in attendance. What’s your status?”  
“Turned on beyond belief. You wouldn’t believe the looks she keeps giving me every time she turns around in that short skirt. I’m not sure I’ll make it through the whole wining and dining part of the evening, R. Cause of death: really hot lady who can’t hear a word I’m saying but stares at me like I’m brilliant.”  
R buries his face in his hands, sighing heavily. 006 is talkative today, even for him. He has two sides: talkative and deadly and talkative and seductive. They’re not mutually exclusive. No wonder Boothroyd handed it off to him. He doubts they actually need him in M’s Situation Room for the Istanbul mission right now.  
“Focus, 006. Remember, you’re supposed to be earning an invitation to the party tomorrow night.”  
“Like she’d deny me anything. You should see the way she looks at me now, R, and I haven’t even loosened my tie. She’ll hand me her father’s head on a platter the moment I take off my shirt. And she doesn’t care that I don’t know a word of sign language- she isn’t even looking at me.”  
“You just said she keeps looking at you.”  
“Well, she does every time she slides her hand across to trail up my thigh, squeezing my quads as she goes along and making little happy sounds at my awesome muscle tone, stopping just short of my cock every time. Or every time she sashays out of this private room with that skirt hiked a little higher each time to go get another drink. That ass is divine, R, absolutely divine. I can’t wait to get my hands on it without those red lace panties in the way.”  
“Can we be professional for once, 006?”  
“Says the nameless person who lets himself into my flat every once in a while, regardless of whether I have a date there or not, to take over my game consoles until Boothroyd clears me to drag you back. I haven’t forgiven you for the yoga instructor who walked out because my other lover was there, you know. Yoga. Instructor. Even her ass wasn’t as nice as the target’s.”  
It’s going to be a long night.  
006’s running commentary turns downright pornographic the further they go in the mission, but unfortunately, Boothroyd frowns on turning comms off during a mission. Apparently, she brought toys with her. 006 is just as happy as he could be.  
R is sexually frustrated, sitting in his office with a live porno in his ear and a lonely night stretching ahead of him, when he gets the news that Ronson died before Retrieval could get to him and 007 is chasing the hard drive of the computer he was to retrieve.  
006 is smoking on the balcony, unashamedly in the nude as CCTV shows R, when they get the news that Agent Moneypenny shot 007 down. Well, when he gets the news. He doesn’t tell 006, just gives him a lecture and threatens to not erase the CCTV and let his image hit the Internet. 

***  
He gets Lyra and Viola’s help to drag Alec out of his drunken stupor, sober him up, and take him to the range to work out his aggression. R stays at Alec’s flat whenever he isn’t overnighting in MI6, running through all the two-player games in his library and sneaking more in when Alec is out on a mission. His work doesn’t suffer, but he and Bond were always close. He’s just enough of a professional- or whatever passes for a professional in Alec’s eyes- to keep his personal life in his personal life.  
A whole month later, he is kicking Alec’s ass in Mario Kart and reminding him that he ought to be glad they aren’t playing Strip Mario Kart when MI6 explodes.  
Alec takes him to ground immediately, untraceable even by all the resources of MI6. They end up in Scotland, in the village closest to where Bond grew up, staying with the caretaker of Skyfall’s lands. His electronics have all been destroyed and replaced with inferior products.  
Alec took far too much pleasure in that. R has a much better idea now of why so little of his tech returns intact.  
“Officially, it’s a gas leak,” he tells Alec late at night, while the agent is cleaning his knives and R is supposed to be sleeping. “It’s too convenient, to me. Boothroyd was in just the wrong place, M was there as a witness but far enough not to be damaged, and then there’s something in Tanner’s report about a message.”  
Alec doesn’t pause, scrubbing at a tiny speck of dried blood in the design on the hilt of his favorite knife, frowing at his task. “It’s official, then. Major Boothroyd was caught in the blast.”  
“I suppose you ought to start calling me Q, then. Boothroyd made it clear I was his successor long ago.” He leans back against the pillows supporting his back, hands stilling on his keyboard. Boothroyd has been his father almost as long as Siger Holmes was. His loss doesn’t feel real, he knows it won’t feel real until he’s standing over the closed casket of his mentor.  
“Q. It isn’t weird, not really. Boothroyd never went by Q except on official occasions. Gives me a whole new set of names to call you, at least. I was getting sick of Ryan and you aren’t really a Richard or a Ralph.” Alec stretches, moving over to join R- no, Q now, that ought to be an easier transition than Algernon to nameless to R- and turns so Alec can rub the tension out of his neck, staving off a tension headache.  
“I haven’t seen the all clear signal in the paper yet.” The standard all clear, the one for regular MI6 employees, has been issued but not the even more classified one for executives.  
“Then we stay here for another two days before I move us again. Somewhere even more remote. If it was an inside job, we aren’t safe here. Plenty of people know I used to live with James, before he got shot, and Skyfall is in his file. We’ll go somewhere completely random, have you change our identities, and then move again.”  
“I have a contact who I trust with my life who may be able to arrange a safehouse off the official government files.”  
“We might be dealing with MI6 itself and all its knowledge,” Alec reminds him, hands stilling on Q’s shoulders.  
“Even MI6 has a blindspot when it comes to the Grandmasters.” He knows more about them than anyone else, simply because he would have been expected to become one had he not dabbled in places he should have left alone. He still might end up there, if MI6 ever allowed him out of their grasp and Mycroft reinstated his identity. He knows that Mycroft has hard copies of all the paperwork required to prove his identity and bring Algernon Holmes back from the dead.  
Alec tenses, relaxing a little too suddenly, his nonchalance too contrived. Shaken, falling back on training he hasn’t had to consciously use for years.  
“You have an in with the Grandmasters?”  
“It’s a secret, only to be used in dire need. He’s probably about to start an international manhunt for me, though, which means you’ve done a good job.”  
“How do you know that for certain?”  
Q holds up his laptop, tilting it to a generic email client with some cheesy inside joke for a screen name. One email sits in his inbox.

Earnest, don’t make me tell Mummy.  
Love,  
M&A  
P.S.- Lunch on Tuesday? 13:20 at our usual.

“The manhunt goes out on Tuesday at 1:20 PM. If I want to stop it and not make a scene, contact him and prove I’m myself. If not, he’ll find me anyways and drag me to safety. That’s what he does.”  
“The White Knight?” Alec guesses, naming one of the positions in the Grandmasters known for being protective, often considered the most overqualified bodyguard in the world by those who know the White Knight exists.  
Q grins. “The Black King and his PA, the Black Queen.”  
Alec whistles. “Get me a better car and multiple safehouses. They’re good, but I still want to be able to move you on a moment’s notice and have a place to go. And make sure that they know not to alert MI6 to your continued existence.”  
Q dials Anthea, not Mycroft. Nobody will question a call from her brother, not even in these times, but people question who has Mycroft’s private line.  
“An?” he greets her with, putting on the soft tones and shy questions of Andrew White.  
“Andy, this isn’t the best time,” Anthea replies.  
“An, can I borrow your car? My battery seems to have died.” I need transport, he really says, don’t send agents with it, we can go find it.  
“You ought to be glad you never ask me for anything, Andy. My car is at home, can you take a cab there?” We’re glad you came to us for help. Car will be left in the parking lot nearest Mycroft’s townhouse.  
“Thanks a lot, An. I’d appreciate it if I could stay the night, too. Fight with the girlfriend, you know?” Safehouse, please, don’t tell anyone where I am.  
“You know where to find my spare key.” One will be arranged, details hidden in the car as per procedure.  
Anthea rings off after a little more idle chitchat, saying her boss is calling. Q makes the appropriate grumbles about him working her too hard, then thanks her again.  
“So, girlfriend?”  
“Not really my area,” he says, turning his back to Alec again. The massage resumes without the questioning.  
“Boyfriend, then.”  
He twists around to look at the agent. Alec’s a massive flirt, everyone knows that, and this isn’t the first time his regard has been turned on Q in this way. He must be sure in Mycroft’s protection to suddenly drop the over-protectiveness.  
“I’m a nameless entity who lives to serve MI6. I haven’t been to my own flat in almost two months. Relationships aren’t really in the cards.”  
Alec shrugs. “You could have just stopped at the MI6 card. None of us really get to have regular relationships.”  
Q turns away again, snuggling under the duvet and shooing the agent away. “You’re a furnace, Trevelyan, and I’m sweltering already. Wake me up when you’re ready to move.”  
Alec snorts something unflattering and returns to his knives, brushing Q’s hair off his forehead as he goes.


	8. Explosions in London

When John exclaims at something on his laptop and turns on the news, Sherlock glances over from his melodramatic flop on the couch, hoping for a gruesome murder to be hitting the headlines. His phone hasn’t rung yet, so maybe it is something high-profile that Lestrade needs to clear the scene, first.   
Minsk was a wretched waste of time. Bored, bored, bored, bored, bored! It liquefies his brain, his neurons firing at half the speed as he can feel himself turning into a sludge of average-ness. It’s wretched, absolutely wretched, and John has absolutely no sympathy for his boredom now. Not between the holes in the wall- the wall really did deserve it, but neither John nor Mrs. Hudson understand genius- and the whole debacle with Moriarty and the old woman in the block of flats.   
“Massive explosion in central London,” the newscaster drones in that voice they have that manages to make even the most fascinating news sound utterly boring in a worse-than-usual way. Boring. They’re still talking about the flats Moriarty blew up. That’s nothing new. Sherlock starts to roll over, half-listening so he can pretend to have been paying attention when John wants to try and have a conversation about it.  
“Sources within the British Government confirm that there are already reported casualties from he explosion occurring on the top floors of a building best known for housing MI6, one of the most high-security buildings in the country. This is considered to be an act of terrorism.”  
“You might want to put on a less hideous jumper, John,” he comments, turning over again but still listening. “Mycroft will be here soon to make me go work on that. I wonder what he’ll bribe me with this time.”  
Mycroft doesn’t come.  
John gets all smug about it and offers to play Cluedo to pass the time.   
It’s obvious that the victim did it, that this entire thing is a poorly-staged setup, but John laughs at him and says that isn’t in the rules.   
Somehow, and he won’t take any credit for it, the board ends up with a knife in it and the pieces thrown out the landing. He wouldn’t be that childish, of course. It would be completely illogical, a product of sentiment.   
And he doesn’t do sentiment.


	9. Finding a Spider

“I don’t care that you live in a secure MI6 facility and I don’t care that you don’t want a bodyguard. Headquarters was a secure facility, too, and that didn’t save Boothroyd. Oh, and I’m naming you his successor before we even bother reading the will. He loved you like a son, and I expect you to make him proud and not get yourself killed being stubborn.” M finishes her tirade, stalking across the living room of what used to be his flat. She sent movers in to pack up all his belongings under the direction of 006 and 001, moving him into 006’s guest room.   
“I deal with 006’s sex life enough on the other end of his comms, M. I do not need to deal with it live in the room next door. Can’t I go live with 001 or 002? I’ll even take 004, annoying as he is.” Q doesn’t bother mentioning that everyone, including himself, already assumes he’s the new Q. If Boothroyd’s will said anything different, it would be ignored.   
“With 007 dead, you’ll be the safest by 006’s side. And if 007 pulls a resurrection act again, he and 006 were already flatmates, so you’ll be doubly safe.” M takes his keys from him, plucking off his house key and pocketing it. “Tanner and I will drop you off on our way to a meeting. You’re Q now, and that makes you a high-level MI6 executive, but I’m still the boss. Now, go.”  
“Meddlesome old ladies with nothing better to do,” he grumbles, picking up his laptop bag and following Tanner into the car. Of course, Tanner squishes him between him and M out of a sadistic sense of something. Glee, perhaps, but he isn’t sure Tanner has glee.  
“Do you at least have a project to keep me busy while you deny me access to MI6 or should I return to taking over the Internet?”  
Tanner hands him a file. All the names have been redacted, as he requests them to be when first analyzing a case with impartiality, telling the story of a criminal mastermind completely off MI6’s radar who is pulling the strings of others. Reportedly, he’s poking around Mycroft’s Flight of the Dead, which was irritating 007 to no end because he won the paintball fight to have it named after him, as well as a whole lot of other crimes. 003 was contesting the results of the paintball war, despite being splattered in 005 and 009’s sparkly pink paint, up until the moment Bond was shot off a bridge. Now, they’re having to convince the other Double-0s not to erect a paintball-splattered shrine to their lost companion in the plane. Double-0s like flashy, they don’t want to pay attention to the fact that they need the terrorists convinced it is real, not tipped off by an enshrined paintball gun fully loaded with Bond’s particular favorite shade of blue. Each Double-0 has their own color in these mock battles so they know who killed whom.   
Even without names, he sees Sherlock’s work all over the rash of almost-bombings and the one bombing that happened. Some of the particular leaps of logic could only be made by people with a very particular skill set. This Moriarty seems to be one. The only other ones Q knows are himself, his once-brothers, and his biological parents. Well, Mummy at least. Father was a little less logical and a little more intuitive.   
Absorbed in his brother’s exploits regaled in prose definitely not his own, he doesn’t notice Tanner turning him over to 006 and being settled down on the couch he insisted Alec buy for the TV room because it was far more comfortable for Q to fall asleep on.   
“Tea, Q,” Alec informs him, putting a cup of tea with far more milk and sugar than he usually admits to liking in his free hand, turning the page for Q when he protests. Q frowns, getting comfortable against Alec’s side so he can balance his own cup on the tray sitting on Alec’s lap, digging his toes under the cuddly blanket he keeps here. He denied Alec the most updated tech after he stole Q’s cuddly blanket for an entire three missions.   
“You know, this doesn’t mean I like you being my bodyguard 24 hours a day.”  
“How about bodyguard for most of your waking hours and tea-fetcher and comfy pillow for the rest?”  
“That’s satisfactory. I won’t kill you in your sleep any longer.”  
“Thank you, Q.”  
Alec fetches his laptop when he finishes reading the entire file. Given that the man is apparently a criminal genius with a fondness for drama and other geniuses, it’s abhorrent how little information MI6 managed to gather without Q’s help. He claims to have an international organization. That is sort of their business. Between that and not knowing who blew up MI6, they really need to grow up and stop playing at being spies.   
It would be lovely if this Moriarty turned out to also be the one who blew up MI6- he does have a fondness for explosives, though Q is pegging that more on the dramatics and less on the actually blowing things up, which does sort of fit their profile for whoever attacked them- but he doesn’t think you. Moriarty is a madman, a genius madman, but he doesn’t do what he does out of anger. Whoever blew up MI6 didn’t just blow up enough to make a point. They did it to kill almost everyone in the building and didn’t give any warning to anybody. From what he now knows about Moriarty, that’s not his style. He doesn’t like the shadows that much.   
Somebody would know about it, if it were him.   
“What are you doing?”  
“Trying to find a spider. MI6’s intel is utter shit, in this case, so Logos is going to do some digging.”  
Alec closes the laptop lid, reaching over Q’s shoulder and brushing his hands out of the way to do so. “No, you’re not. M wants you hidden, not actively investigating.”  
“M gave me the file.”  
“Tanner gave you the file.”  
“Same difference.”  
“Not to me. Bed, Q, and I’ll see if I can change M’s mind in the morning. Your laptop, by the way, and all your phones are going in my safe. Boothroyd designed this one, not you, so please don’t try to break in. I like this safe.” Alec gets up, taking the laptop with him and gathering all Q’s phones from the kitchen counter.   
“But all my alarms are on those?”  
Alec rolls his eyes. “You aren’t supposed to be going to work tomorrow, so you’ll get up when I make breakfast and the tempting, tempting smell of pancakes drags you from hibernation.”  
Q sulks, then beats all of the high scores Alec and James managed to take from him recently, then beats his own high scores in a feat of pettiness that ought to keep Alec from reclaiming any of them anytime soon. And he reorganizes the silverware drawer. And balances dessert plates and soup bowls inside all of the pots and pans hanging over the kitchen island. And dulls all the big kitchen knives so Alec will have to use the tiny little paring knives that look stupid in his hands.   
Alec makes him pancakes in the morning anyways, but doesn’t make him tea the way he will never make for himself and deny to his last hour actually liking.   
When they get to the new MI6, 007 is there going through routine physicals like he wasn’t shot and declared dead.   
Q groans. Now he’s going to be stuck with two bodyguards harassing him in an attempt to make his life more interesting.


	10. There is No Such Thing as Coincidence

He doesn’t tell John that he thinks it’s not coincidental that right after MI6’s headquarters get blown up, they stumble across the Flight of the Dead named after one of those agents that Sherlock isn’t supposed to know exists but yet he knows anyways and Mycroft never comes forwards to have him help with the situation at MI6. 

To paraphrase his brother, there’s something at MI6 that he’s been skirting the edge of for ages. 

Sherlock glances down at the tickets in his hands. Irene Adler was at the heart of this one. He’ll save her life at the price of information.

John doesn’t have to know.


	11. Every Geek Needs a Glowing Bunny

“Can I have my laptop back now?” he demands as Tanner hands him a file analyzing the fragments from the bullet their hard-drive thief-slash-terrorist shot 007 with and another one detailing his itinerary for an upcoming visit to one of the government’s unsupervised labs. They let him in because he’s got higher security clearance than anyone and appreciates the beauty of their work. He was going to stay with one of the scientists, a lovely woman with a daughter and a rabbit, but not if he’s got 006 in tow.   
“Only if you promise not to try and sic the experiments on Trevelyan and Bond.” Tanner dangles the new Internet password in front of him, snatching it away until he gets an answer.   
“Fine. No matter how irritating my bodyguards are, I promise not to let those mean old scientists at Baskerville start testing on them. And why both? Isn’t 006 already a bit of overkill?”  
“M’s angry with Bond and with two criminal masterminds who like blowing things up on the loose, she decided to give you the extra protection.” Tanner breezes off, leaving the password in 006’s possession.   
“Gimme,” Q reaches out with grabby hands, dropping dignity in favor of Internet.   
“You aren’t going to like it.”  
“I like Internet. Tanner always uses long randomly generated number strings, anyways. I could iterate it, if I wanted.”  
“Try ipromisenottokillagents006and007loveQ. No spaces, no punctuation, no capitalization except for Q.”  
“Liar.”  
“Try it.”  
His computer connects. Q grimaces. “I hate you all.”  
“We love you too.”

***

“Are we there yet?”  
“Are you sure I can’t strangle him?” Bond replies conversationally, knuckles tightening on the wheel of the supposedly safe and inconspicuous SUV that was the only thing M approved them transporting Q in. He insisted on driving the entire way to Dartmoor out of stubbornness? Idiocy? Inability to stop being a control freak even with a MI6 exec who is about to start holding 007’s life in his hands regularly?  
“No, you can’t strangle the mark you’re supposed to be protecting. No wonder I’m M’s favorite these days, if that’s how you take instructions.”  
“You aren’t her favorite, 001’s her favorite. They’ve been working together longer than any of us have been out of primary school. Well, except for me, since I didn’t go. You ought to envy his longevity, the both of you. He’s still fit enough to have a license to kill at eighty-six.”  
Alec sighs and hands Q another bag of licorice.   
“I really want one of the glow-in-the-dark bunnies Dr. Stapleton has been working on. I could train it to carry messages to other techs at night when our choices are be blinded by the lights or trip over wires and risk unplugging our computers.”  
“There is such a thing as e-mail, Q.”  
“I can hack that so easily, it isn’t even funny. I don’t need all of Q-Branch knowing when I spook myself watching an episode of Doctor Who while I run agent ops.”  
“And yet you let us know.”  
“You won’t tell anyone if you value your lives and the nice guns I keep replacing for you. And Alec, if you ever want a convincing costume next time we send you to play Viking at a Faire, you’ll make sure James doesn’t tell anyone.”  
Alec nods. Bond scowls.  
“You’d sell me out for a Viking costume?”  
“Have you seen my abs? In a good costume, I’d have shags lined up for months. Longer if I could get Q-Branch to braid my hair.”  
“His abs are really spectacular,” Q adds helpfully. Alec likes lounging around shirtless, or on one memorable unannounced visit, cooking naked. He also doesn’t always make it to his bedroom with his dates, but Q is always helpful enough to point them in the right direction when he wants to use Alec’s TV.   
“And here’s Baskerville,” Bond announces a little too loudly. “Let’s pretend we’re members of MI6 and not three people who live together, some of which are far too blasé about seeing the others naked.”  
“Not saying your abs aren’t nice, too, but I don’t see them except when I was helping monitor some of your ops.”  
“Have you seen Q’s tattoo?”  
“Consummate professionals,” Bond complains, “not squabbling children.”  
“Don’t tell Medical I have a tattoo. They’ll remember how long it’s been since they last dragged me in for a full evaluation and I don’t want to have to change their psych eval of me again. They have such a way with words, just not a flattering one.”  
Bond rolls down the car window, handing over their official government IDs. They get to be themselves, though they’re not given their official titles, just the equivalent military rank and a full security clearance. Q is Andrew White, his ‘official’ identity, fleshed out by regular visits to see his sister Anthea. She knows enough about his childhood to make it plausible and extrapolates the rest from Mycroft and Sherlock’s childhoods.   
“Welcome to Baskerville. Major Barrymore is waiting for you in the conference room.”  
Halfway through the meeting, Bond and Alec are dealing with all the formalities while Q reads through supposedly secure files and waits to get into the lab. Dr. Stapleton promised him a rabbit when his tertiary phone beeps. Major Barrymore gives him an angry look. From a man who uses Maggie as the secure password in a top-secret military facility, Q is unimpressed.   
Keywords met: Baskerville; Holmes, Mycroft. Identification swiped two minutes ago.  
Thank you, Guardian, he thinks about his personal OS. He likes to know if Mycroft is anywhere near him because he usually comes with apologetic gifts, even now.   
“Major Barrymore, I see that one Mycroft Holmes just entered the facility. As the ranking officer here, I’ll be taking my bodyguards and giving him the full tour. Good day.” He shuts his laptop a little harder than is good for it for the sake of drama, glad that he’s using one of the supposedly-indestructible Double-0 laptops that they manage to destroy anyways. He’s almost tempted to revoke Boothroyd’s rules about Q-Branch in the field just so he can go hit his agents every time they destroy his tech.   
“In what country are you my ranking officer? You don’t have an actual military rank.”  
“Remind me, Major, where a Brigadier ranks relative to you?” Bond asks quietly, smiling his shark’s smile.   
“Above me, sir,” Major Barrymore replies, remembering at long last Bond and Alec’s official rank. As the highest field rank, that’s awarded to the Double-0s.   
“And he is our ranking officer. Tell me, Major Barrymore, should you allow him to go where he wishes?”  
“I should. Apologies, Mr. White. Feel free to show Mr. Holmes around.”  
Q slides out of the room with all the grace he can muster. Gangly limbs and too many hours in front of the computer do not make him the most graceful of people, but he’s been working on that. His phone informs him that Mycroft swiped in to the lab near where Dr. Stapleton works. Fantastic- he can pick up his bunny and see the one brother he’s permitted to see. He can pretend he knows Mycroft because of Anthea.   
“What happened to Bluebell, Dr. Stapleton?” Q stops in the doorway, one Double-0 crashing into him and the other catching himself on the frame. Q stumbles forwards a few steps, staring at two figures that are all so familiar from the photos floating around the Internet and the papers.   
That isn’t Mycroft.   
That’s Dr. John Watson standing patiently by as Sherlock Holmes verbally berates Dr. Stapleton.   
He pulls his phone out and dials Mycroft’s personal phone.   
“Mycroft Holmes’ phone, Anthea speaking,” she answers after the second ring.   
“Anthea, Sherlock nicked Mycroft’s ID card. He’s here at Baskerville while we’re doing our visit.”  
Anthea pulls the phone away from herself not quite far enough to mask her swearing. “Stay away from him, Andrew. He doesn’t know you’re alive.”  
Sherlock pivots on his heel, marching towards the door with a glance at his phone. He smiles to himself, looks up, and freezes.   
“You’re dead.”  
“And you’re Mycroft Holmes.”  
They stare at each other in silence while John Watson shifts uncomfortably in Sherlock’s shadow. Alec steps around Q, moving him a little closer to Bond in one of those carefully calculated moves that look so incredibly casual that is a requirement of all the Double-0s.   
“Captain John Watson, right? I’ve heard about the blog. I’m Brigadier Alec Trevelyan and this these are Brigadier James Bond and Mr. Andrew White.”  
“Pleased to meet you,” John starts, reaching out for a handshake when Sherlock bats his hand down.   
“Lying liars who lie,” Sherlock hisses, earning a surprised look from Watson. “Andrew White is a pseudonym meant to be exceedingly generic, but tied in to my brother’s fiancée, Anthea White. You’re not Andrew White.”  
Bond puts a hand on the back of Q’s cardigan, clenching his fingers in the wool to pull him out of the way at a moment’s notice. “Don’t try,” Bond whispers as Q’s hands jerk towards the buttons on the front.  
Sherlock steps forwards, punctuating every word with a click of his heel until he steps up to Alec’s side, nearly even with Q.   
“You’re not Andrew White, and you’re supposed to be dead.”  
Sherlock reaches out with those lightning-fast reflexes he always had to punch Q. Bond yanks him out of the way, tucking him between his body and the wall, while Alec grabs Sherlock and twists his arm behind his back, forcing him against the opposite wall.   
“Hands off, Holmes,” Alec warns, stepping away with a final jerk that has Sherlock hissing in pain.   
“Trevelyan, if you would see Sherlock out, I have business with Dr. Stapleton. Bond can watch me.”  
“Bond, as in Bond Air?” Watson speaks up.  
“I won the bet. It was catchier than Trevelyan Air.”  
Watson nods. “MI6. Sherlock, we’ll be having another conversation about what’s a little bit not good back at the Cross Keys, alright?”  
Q pretends he isn’t shaken with all the composure Mummy taught Mycroft, at much pain to herself and everyone involved, gave up with Sherlock, and then after Sherlock was such a terror tried again with him. He smiles wanly, greeting Dr. Stapleton and claiming his rabbit in a far quieter ceremony than he was hoping for.   
Sherlock. God, why did it have to be Sherlock?


	12. Sentiment is a Defect Found Only on the Losing Side

“Who was that, Sherlock?” John asks that night, in the privacy of the one room available at the Cross Keys. Sherlock paces in front of the window, end to end to end. Step, step, step, click of his heels together, and pivot.   
“Someone who was supposed to have died fifteen years ago.” He pivots early, slamming a hand on each side of the window and glaring down at the town below. He should be thinking about the case, but seeing Algernon- not Algae, not after everything he did- is ruining his impartiality. He wants to visit Baskerville again, but not while Algernon might be there, the traitorous whelp.  
“Yeah, I got that part, thanks Sherlock. Who is he, though? I’ve never seen you that upset, even in the tantrums after Moriarty at the pool.”  
“I do not throw tantrums!” Sherlock hisses, turning again and stalking over to the chair where John sits answering people on his blog, looming.   
“Keep telling yourself that,” John continues, pecking away at the keyboard. For a self-proclaimed writer, he ought to be embarrassed about his typing skills.   
“I’m not going to tell you just because you’re pretending to be interested,” he informs John, sprawling across the bed with less of a dramatic leap than he would on the couch at home. He doesn’t trust the springs here.  
John, behind the safety of his screen, rolls his eyes and starts Googling Sherlock instead. Someone that important to provoke that reaction has to show up in Sherlock’s past somewhere. 

***

“What was that about, Q?”  
“I can’t tell. State secrets and all.”  
“Our job is to keep secrets and right now, to protect you. Tell us.” Alec lounges across one of the double beds in the guest room in the base, the one Q didn’t claim. He won rock-paper-scissors, so Bond will be taking first watch. He’s leaning against the wall, eyes flicking from window to door without ever quite looking away from Q.  
“If this ever gets out, I will find you and I will kill you long before M and Q-Branch ever get that chance, and it will be quick, because if this gets out it will blow parts of the government wide open that you know are meant so stay in the shade. You need to convince me that it’s worth it.”  
“I’ve been loyal and kept the way you make your tea, your crippling addiction to certain video games and your intense hatred of others, and even the simple fact that you spent almost as much time at my flat as your own even before you moved in with us a secret.” Alec drops his head back against the pillows, raising a hand for Bond to toss him a water bottle.   
“You’re ours to protect, Q, and that means confidentiality in everything. I know you don’t really know or trust me, and my record gives you no reason to, but Alec trusts me with his life and M trusts me with yours.”  
Q sighs, fingers itching for a piano he can’t have. He flicks his fingers over his keyboard in irritation, the keys more familiar now than his piano keys are, but they don't feel right while preparing to deal with the issue that is Sherlock Holmes.  
“He’s my brother. You’ve done your reading, you know that Mycroft Holmes has one sibling, junkie-turned-detective Sherlock Holmes, but I’m certain you’ve also heard the rumors. That Mycroft, before he even had too much power, made his own brother disappear when he was a risk to Queen and Country. Only a few people know, by the way. M knows, Mycroft and his assistant know, and Boothroyd knew. Anyone who was in Q-Branch before I became R knows that my identity was erased, but they don’t know who I was or why.”  
“And who were you?” Alec asks.  
“Once upon a time, I was Algernon Holmes. I don’t really miss the name.”  
“And why was he erased?” Bond follows up.  
Q sighs. This is technically the less important secret, and more well-known since Anthea, Mycroft, and their entire team know it, but that’s the connection between Moncrieff and Algernon Holmes. Only he, Anthea, and Mycroft know that Q used to be Moncrieff. This secret would give them both leverage over him forever.  
“I was too good at being me too early.”  
He rolls over and goes to sleep at that point, unwilling to explain. They’re clever. They can figure it out. Seeing Sherlock- seeing Sherlock so hurt by Q continuing to live- drained him.


	13. The Most Secure Wedding, Probably Ever

The wedding is a quiet affair attended by some of the most powerful people in the world. The Queen is supposed to stop by later to congratulate them, but international affairs are on halt for the day. 

M is here with his daughter, his wife long since taken by cancer. On one side of them sits Eve and Tanner, surreptitiously taking glances at their phones and checking email, with Cait and Danielle representing Q-Branch on the other side. Apart from James and Alec, who are here as his bodyguards, the rest of the Double-0s and other high-level agents are assisting MI5 and Mycroft’s secret sector of the government with security. 

Mycroft and Anthea have been working together for nearly twenty years at this point, together for fifteen of them, and engaged for a decade. They would be expected to have a wedding like this, with their siblings standing up for them. Until now, that wasn’t possible with Q’s cover tied in to Anthea. 

He stands by the altar in a pale grey suit with a peach tie, hands clasped behind his back as he waits on Anthea’s side. James and Alec, in the stark black-and-white to make sure nobody mistakes them for a part of the wedding party, stand a few steps behind him in the shadow of the flowers. 

Directly across the aisle stands Sherlock, wearing a matching suit to Q’s. He’s pointedly ignoring Q, which is sad but not unrealistic. Mummy and Father took it a lot better, grateful to have him alive and long-since having forgiven him for being Moncrieff. Mycroft told them once Sherlock found out, knowing Sherlock would blurt it out sooner or later. Mummy keeps wiping away tears, watching her boys up at the front, no matter that Q is here as Andrew White today. 

Mycroft steps out from the wings of the church, standing slightly in front of Sherlock with a small smile for Q before the first strains of the music start and Anthea steps out at the back of the church. Her parents are both gone, so she walks solo down the aisle, smiling a real smile at Mycroft. 

Instead of the traditional music, Anthea asked for Sherlock and Q to record a piece for her. To his ears, it still sounds a little staged, a little composed, because it is. He and Sherlock don’t have the musical synchronicity they once did, the ability to know what the other wanted to play. Everyone else gasps in delight at the music, at Anthea’s dress, at their eyes only on each other.   
They all know that this will be the only time they get to see this devotion. In their daily life, they put on professional faces, hiding all of this away. 

When Anthea reaches the front, she hands Q her bouquet with a quick squeeze of his hand, then takes both of Mycroft’s as they make their vows before Q, Sherlock, and assorted executives from every branch of the British governments and representatives from Mycroft’s contemporaries overseas. 

At the reception, John Watson helps carry Sherlock to one of Mycroft’s cars after Sherlock gets himself drunker than Mycroft says he’s ever seen. Q doesn’t miss the morose glares sent his way, even huddled as he is between James and Alec’s shoulders. That night, he insists on watching stupid horror movies late at night until he falls asleep in the early hours of the morning, draped across the couch and both agents’ laps, and they play rock-paper-scissors to determine who has to call M and tell him Q won’t be making it in today.


	14. The Lab and The Phone Call

“She’s dying, Sherlock! Do you even care? No, of course not, you… you machine!”

John storms off, and Sherlock picks up his phone and begins to type.


	15. A Mission, A Madman, and St. Bart's Hospital

Six months since Silva bombed MI6.   
Six months since Sherlock found he was still alive, and he couldn’t manage to keep looking in to Moriarty because it reminded him that Sherlock wouldn’t listen to a word he said anyways. Even Mycroft has been shut out of Baker Street for his part in denying Sherlock this crucial piece of knowledge.   
Five months since he sat in a darkened Q-Branch, unable to do anything but track Silva’s men as they went after Bond and M at Skyfall, Alec a silent presence who brought him unending cups of tea the way he likes it and ordered some of the lower-ranked agents to make sandwiches for him, since the terrible phone call from Bond in which he repeated in a cold, broken tone that an agent was down, that M was killed in the line of action.   
Three long months of rebuilding MI6, of adjusting to a new M, of living with one over-protective agent and one broken agent, neither of whom have been removed from their roles as his bodyguards. They can go on missions so long as one of them remains glued to Q’s side anytime he leaves MI6 and most of the time he’s there, too.   
This last month, though, has been hellish. M won’t take Alec and James off bodyguard duty, refusing them any missions out of the country and not even allowing them to have Q as their handler when they are given missions. They’re getting antsy, picking fights with each other, which is definitely NOT helpful when he’s trying to track down the most recent Silva-copycat who is attacking the CIA. They, unfortunately, were devastated more than MI6 was by Silva’s attacks, requiring grudging help to chase the copycat down. He’s barely sleeping with some of the other Double-0s being incompetent and not getting him the data he needs before the copycat’s forces vanish.   
Logos, Chaos, and Ethos aren’t enough separately. He needs to bring Moncrieff back, but he’ll never get permission to do that, so he’s forced to work around this.   
“I need to send either Bond or Trevelyan, M,” he argues. “The others aren’t doing their work and I need that data. And I will run this mission on my own.”  
“That’s a bad idea, Q,” M counters. “It puts you in too much risk, depriving you of one of your bodyguards.”  
“I’m going to murder them myself if you don’t give them something to do.”  
“Fine. One of them, out of the country, with you as handler. But I want it to be Trevelyan. He’s less likely to vanish and leave you with only one bodyguard.” M leans back in his chair. “Now out of my office, and tell Moneypenny to make sure that you eat.”  
“Yes, sir.”  
James is waiting outside, flirting fondly with Eve. They’ve haven’t repeated Macau, according to their regular sessions where she forces him to eat because he forgets and Alec and James are inhuman and forget that regular people need food, but they’re both terrible flirts. He’s not sure the two of them could hold a conversation without either screaming obscenities or flirting. Alec is off harassing Catering into letting him into the kitchens. As last Q heard, charm didn’t work because they were more afraid of M’s wrath when Alec would blow up their kitchen than they were flattered that he noticed them. He’s now trying to prove that they should be more afraid of the one with a license to kill.  
Q sometimes has a private laugh over the fact that all he has to do is ask either Elena or Joe to let Alec in the kitchen and it would be a done deal.   
“Eve, you’re officially sanctioned to keep force-feeding me meals, though please don’t give Trevelyan kitchen privileges because I’m enjoying the struggle. Bond, you’re unreliable and therefore stuck on guard duty while I run Trevelyan through a mission.”  
James stops flirting immediately. “You’re running the mission?”  
“I already said that. Please keep up.”  
“I’ll make arrangements to keep you safe, then. We’ll stay at a hotel when Trevelyan returns, give him some time to settle. Don’t tell him which one.”  
Q steps closer to Bond, staring straight into his eyes with flinty determination. “And why would I do that? This isn’t the first time I’ve run a mission for 006. I’ve been running his missions for ten years now.”  
“Eve, I’ll leave this one to you. M,” he raises his voice, “I’ll be right outside. I’m not abandoning Q, I’m just sacrificing Moneypenny.”  
“Shut my door on your way out,” M calls back.  
James does just that, leaving him with Eve. She leans against her desk, sighing. “Boothroyd kept you away from the agents, so you never had to deal with this before. So often, you as the handler are their only support, their only link to safety in a hostile world. You help them achieve mission objectives, you keep them sane under torture, and you make sure they get home, especially with the Double-0s. When they’re on mission, you are their life, and from there on it’s just attachment theory. It manifests differently for each agent and handler.”  
“Like what?”  
“Like 003 and Danielle being married for twenty years despite both being workaholics. Like how all the agents nearly worshipped Boothroyd and M. Like how when you collapse at your computer late at night, one of the Double-0s is always called from their bed just to carry you to Medical. With Bond and Trevelyan always in such close proximity to you, who knows how terribly attached they could get.”  
Q sits down on top of Eve’s desk, burying his face in his hands. “Why won’t M lift this stupid edict and let me live on my own, then? If I already have all the Double-0s that protective, this is stupid.”  
Eve shrugs. “You are safer, though. Bond and Trevelyan are smart, they’re both aware of this phenomenon. They’ll watch out for you when they other is on mission. Now go on, save Catering. Q-Branch just reported a flamethrower missing but not checked out.”  
“Bond,” he shouts, slamming the door open. “We need to get to Catering!”  
The fire is out and they’re returning to Q-Branch when the entire Branch explodes into titters of shock. Cait walks into his office, pulling up the news on his touchscreen wall.  
Sherlock Holmes a Fraud  
Is Moriarty a Creation of Sherlock Holmes’?  
Richard Brook tells all: Holmes hired him to be Moriarty  
He’s used to those headlines. He’s had Cait monitoring the news so he doesn’t have to wade through the drama swirling around Sherlock all the time.   
Breaking News: Two deaths from roof of St. Bartholomew’s Hospital. Initial reports claim victims to be Richard Brook and Sherlock Holmes.   
Breaking News: Did Sherlock Holmes murder Richard Brook to keep his secrets?  
Breaking News: Genius Detective commits Suicide under accusations of fraud.  
Cait leaves him alone with Bond and Trevelyan before he allows himself to collapse. Sherlock was always strong, didn’t care what people thought of him. It would have taken complete rejection from one of the few people he trusted to break him that far, to put him in that bad of a place.   
He caused his brother’s suicide.  
No, no, no. This is horrible. He should have been more careful. Should have just let Major Barrymore deal with Sherlock, not gone down because he wanted to see Mycroft. Sherlock hates not knowing, and they used to be tight. Knowing that he lied to Sherlock for so many years, if only be omission, by not telling Sherlock he was alive… no, no, no.   
Sherlock is dead.   
Sherlock’s face, eyes blank and blood dripping over unfamiliar familiar features, is plastered all over the Internet. Every bone broken, his mind supplies, for a fall of that height. There are videos taken from CCTV and cell phones of his jump, tipping forwards off that roof while John Watson calls out in horror from below.   
For once, he hates the Internet age. Sherlock faked his own death dozens of times as a child, but it was always in posed bodies, staged crime scenes, and no witnesses. If it weren’t for the video, the photos, he could believe it were another one of those, but he’s seen Sherlock fall.   
It’s looping on his screen. He can imagine it only too well, despite the poor angles and piecing together the visuals. Sherlock, up on the edge of the roof, dramatic to the end. Spreading his arms, taking a moment to breathe in his city and feel the gravity of the situation before shifting up on to his tiptoes and tipping forwards. The indrawn breath, Sherlock’s longest-running tell of emotional distress, and then opening his eyes wide to watch as the ground rose up to meet him.   
He always wanted to watch everything, Sherlock did. He would want to watch his own death, too, catalogue it away in his Mind Palace for all the good it would do him there.   
“Q,” all of the Double-0s in the country clamor around his desk, one offering him a cup of tea which he sips at blindly- must have been Alec, nobody else knows how he likes it- and someone handing him the cookies he likes and someone hunting for the remote to turn off his screen because they don’t know it’s controlled through his tablet- oh look, there James figured it out-   
“Out of my way,” someone female calls, shoving Double-0s. He honestly doesn’t recognize the voice, twisted by worry in a way rarely heard at MI6. Stiletto heels- Eve is at least in the room, though maybe not the voice.   
“Q-Branch, OUT!” Danielle bellows, and the room clears of a lot of people. He doesn’t know how many. Failed, failed. That was lesson number one- observe every detail, remember it all, don’t forget anything because it might be the critical piece. Get the closest that they can get to eidetic memories.   
Sherlock loved it. He wasn’t as good at deductions as Mycroft, but he memorizes details in a way that let him realize more after the fact, put together inconsequential deductions to find a bigger picture. Sherlock would be so ashamed of Q’s lapse in memory here, so disappointed to be related to him.  
Kinslayer. Just another reason for Mycroft to lock him away in the depths of the government, to make sure he doesn’t exist. He ought to expect his demotion any day now.   
Someone picks him up, tucking him against their chest while he shivers- shock, his mind supplies, but he ignores it, this is why Sherlock was right and emotions are too much trouble, they always felt too strongly- and the swaying of the car and the beep of the scanners he designed to keep the flat secure when he decided Alec and James were taking their security too much on the basis of being able to kill intruders first.   
He comes back to himself slowly, the shudders slowly restoring more and more function. He never thought of this place as more of home than his office at MI6, but he doesn’t want to leave right now, not even to run Alec’s mission.   
He’s wrapped up in his comforter and Alec’s and James’ too, surrounded by all of their pillows. Eve, looking incongruous in his bedroom in one of her slinky sheath dresses that are just a hair too tight to be professional dress, is holding one of his hands. Through the open door, he can see James prowling around the flat, strides measured and footsteps soft. Patrolling. At a guess, Alec is patrolling the outside of the building.   
Classic stress response in the Double-0s, from everything he’s seen. Get somewhere safe, somewhere private, and somewhere controllable, then ensure that it stays so safe.   
“There was a call from the non-existent part of the government right after the news broke. M and I were informed, and then we went to tell Bond and Trevelyan only to find out that they already knew.”  
He nods.   
“Trevelyan told me to only let either him or Bond make you a fresh cup of tea, so you’ll have to make due with lukewarm tea. M still wants to send Trevelyan overseas, but he wants R on call the entire time if you still want to run the mission.”  
“And I won’t be leaving your side, either.” Bond leans against the doorway, a fresh cup of tea in his hand. “Eve will be there, too. And just because I know you’re clever, I’ve had any of the common temptations removed from the flat and from your office in MI6 and you will never be alone.”  
“I’m not suicidal, James.”  
“Would you tell us if you were?”  
Q dips his head. “No.”  
“That’s what I thought. Get your information, get Alec home safely, and then we’ll pick up the pieces. Oh, and I think this is the excuse M was looking for to keep you moved in with us permanently. All of the other department heads live with full-time bodyguards after the Silva incident. M himself has a team of agents who wanted to retire from Double-0 status but were too senior to move to regular status. For the foreseeable future, you’re here with us.”  
Q reaches for his spare earpiece, always on his bedside table, setting it on his lap with hands that don’t quite shake.   
“Tomorrow. R can take care of preparations. Tell her that Dani and Terence can do the work I normally pass to her when sending agents out.”


	16. This is a Terrible Idea. I Like It.

“I don’t like it.”  
“I’m the only one who can track them, M, and I’ll be perfectly safe with 006 and 007 with CIA backup. We can’t send an entire response team without alienating the CIA, but they need me and 006 and 007 can pretend to be there just as my bodyguards.”  
“I don’t like it, Q, which means I won’t sign off on it.”  
“Don’t, M. R has been here longer than I have. She should be Q, but she didn’t even want to be R until I begged her to. She and Danielle will run the Branch perfectly.”  
“She’s not you. I’ve read the files, Q. At nineteen, Boothroyd would have handed over the Branch if it weren’t for your history. At twenty-one, when you’d been proven trustworthy, it was Mawdsley who argued that you needed more time before taking over. At that time, the R before you wanted to return to the ranks of the techs and put you in her place if Mawdsley wouldn’t let you be Q. There is no replacement for you.”  
“I ought to be flattered. If I’m that good, let me go. Bond and Trevelyan are your best agents, you know it. You and Mawdsley trusted them to keep me alive, continue to trust them, so let me do this.”  
“Why are you so intent on this?”  
“I can’t, sir. You’ll have to ask Mycroft Holmes about that. It isn’t my secret.”  
M leans back in his seat, watching with sharp eyes that remind Q of Mummy’s when they were denying having done anything wrong. The old M would have raged angrily, not sat and observed in silence. Q would be a lot more comfortable with that. That didn’t make him feel like he was all of five years old again with Sherlock trying to push the blame onto him.   
“I’m calling Holmes. If he doesn’t confirm that you have a legitimate reason to be in the field, well, remember the last time you were only a risk of betrayal. Last chance, Q, to tell me the truth.”  
“I am, M.”  
They’re kicked out of the room while M dials Mycroft.   
Twenty minutes later, M has a full set of papers drawn up for Andrew White. Bond and Trevelyan already have papers. They leave as soon as Trevelyan comes back to Britain.  
They’ll be waiting at the airport to shuffle the hostages over to MI6 custody, then spend the night in the airport hotel to avoid morning traffic. 

***

“This is a terrible idea. I like it.”  
Alec is sitting way too close, which makes James pace anxiously, but they’re already starting their cover. They’re his bodyguards, hence, they need to both be in the same room as he is. This close, Q can feel the energy thrumming through Alec, leftover adrenaline, and he has to agree with James- they should have given Alec a rest day.  
“Go take the first watch, Alec. I’m tired.”  
“I just came off a mission! James has been lazing around watching you code!”  
“You’re practically vibrating. Go on, I need room to sprawl.”  
Alec hauls himself off the edge of Q’s bed, going to patrol when Q rolls over and makes it clear he’s not playing. It was a relatively easy mission, one that he could have done on his own without Q in his ear, so Alec isn’t too keyed up. If he weren’t so tired, he’d go down to the gym and let them compete and wear each other out.   
He’s going to kill Sherlock for doing this to him. He’s passed through grief and into anger just in time to find out Sherlock isn’t actually dead, the rage now simmering deep inside his heart. He didn’t have a choice about disappearing. Mycroft could have told Sherlock, but Q’s entire existence now is a state secret.   
He drifts to sleep with the Double-0s murmuring to each other, James’s words calming phrases in the middle of one of the rants where Alec can’t seem to stop for breath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm quickly catching up to parts that I'm going to have to rewrite, so don't expect much at the moment. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a civil engineer, not a computer engineer, so forgive me for making up half my computer stuff. If it makes no sense, I'm open to suggestions.

New Orleans is stunning, ancient and new all wrapped up in a terrible location and foliage that borders between morbid and beautiful. They are at an old plantation that is ‘borrowed’ from some senator or something like that, beautifully refurbished in a way that makes Q warn both agents off destroying it or even damaging it all in any way.  
James appreciates fine furnishings, as he does fine suits and fine dining and so on and so forth. Q’s worried that Alec will destroy something just to make himself feel a little more at home.   
Q slips outside to wander the edge of the property without a shadow, meandering along the treeline where Spanish moss drips from the branches like the tattered remnants of funeral ribbons that sway in the breeze, shifting the shadows with the creaking of ancient branches. A sluggish creek winds in and out of the trees, the hint of a swamp visible near the back of the property. Green flecks of some sort of plant life drift along the surface, eddying into whorls with the twist of the current below, crowning the heads of the turtles who occasionally come up for air.   
The plantation house itself is refurbished and updated not quite to Q’s standards, but good enough for something he isn’t allowed to customize. It has the big porch that wraps around the house, where he’s certain the agents will end up patrolling circles at night, and a garden that Mummy would adore. Everything grows so well here, big and green and leafy.   
“Please don’t do that again,” Alec tells him, pulling Q back against his chest. Q didn’t even hear the agent approach. “James told me to search outside because he didn’t want me tearing apart the house looking for you. Don’t do that to us, Q.”  
“It’s so pretty here,” he answers, leaning back and letting Alec support his weight. Alec’s arms shift to just under his ribcage, possessive and not exactly platonic. James still keeps his hands a little more to himself, but Alec has known Q for over a decade and never did well with personal space in the first place. Not that Q did, either. He runs hot and cold, either unwilling to be touched or curling up next to Alec or Eve on the couch while playing video games or critiquing a stupid romcom Eve wanted to watch on her Friday night.  
“Very different from the London smog, that’s for sure. Both James and I have most of our missions in urban areas, but we never get to appreciate the view.”  
They stand there quietly for a while, letting Q’s mind wind down and take a few moments of relaxation while watching the turtles, knowing that James is standing on the porch watching. When the door shuts, the sound carried softly across the space in between, they know he’ll be requiring Alec’s help in the kitchen soon and Q ought to get their secure network set up.   
“What are you two eating and harassing me into trying this time?” Q calls as he passes the kitchen, where James is dicing something faster than Q personally thinks is safe. He also seems to be using one of the specialty knives Q-Branch manufactured, lethally sharp, easy to conceal, and perfectly sized for sliding between ribs.   
“Jambalaya,” James answers, tossing a knife from a hidden sheath on his back to Alec. “It’ll be ready soon, so don’t take too long.”  
“Sausage or shrimp?” Alec asks as Q heads upstairs.  
“Oh, both, I think. As much protein as we can shove in Q.”  
Q smiles to himself and starts pulling wires out of one of their bags, setting up one of his secure routers that is actually terribly insecure. On the surface, it creates logs of standard websites- he has a different set of websites and different frequencies of occurrence for the three of them- so that anyone looking into their connection finds nothing of interest. Finding nothing at all is the first way to make people look harder. Beneath that is Q’s secure server with several layers of encryption before it reaches MI6.   
This is the type of tech he would like to make standard, but none of the agents- not just the Double-0s- can be trusted not to break it and abandon it and he doesn’t want this tech coming out. It’s one part brilliant hardware, two parts Q’s admittedly genius programming, and like half a part of psychology.   
He loses himself in tweaking his system, increasing his bandwidth within the hidden server so everything continues to look normal but he gets the speed he needs. That’s another way he’s noticed hidden servers partitioned away- if the incoming bandwidth is incredibly larger than what is required for the programs running, there’s something hidden.   
A trickle of internet, just enough for one person to use Facebook, Google some local restaurants, attractions, and recipes, and to check emails: both their false work emails and personal emails. Alec and James’ fake work emails trace back to a security-for-hire service that’s notoriously selective, his are several clearly fake burner emails. They have emails to friends and the occasional family member- written by various members of Q-Branch to change up the tone of the emails and the vocabulary. Q’s primary email, the one he checks every day and does most of his basic correspondence on right now, is cleveralgae. He hopes that if Sherlock sees it, he will remember and save Q the trouble of sending a Double-0 to recover him and come on his own.  
“Q!” Alec shouts.  
“You couldn’t have walked upstairs? You’re supposed to be one of the most dangerous men in the world, you leap off buildings for fun, and you couldn’t walk downstairs?” James chastises as Q makes his way down, a little dusty because they haven’t quite gotten a chance to clean. Well, to have Q and James clean. Alec doesn’t clean except under duress, which last time may or may not have resulted in Eve and James and some questionable methods.   
Officially, Medical doesn’t approve, but they’re still upset about the sheer amount of equipment Alec broke last time he had to be evacuated to Medical and escaped the moment he was conscious. They fixed him up and gave Eve and James pointers on how to be more effective without leaving marks that would make M or Tanner ask questions.   
Unfortunately, they have to behave. M and Tanner would frown upon them torturing each other when the CIA is there to see. It would reflect poorly upon MI6, apparently.   
“How spicy is this?” he asks with his fork halfway to his mouth, staring suspiciously at Alec. He’s got a heavy hand with spices of any kind. They let him have the salt when making pasta a few weeks ago and almost had to call Medical.  
“I did the spices. Alec just chopped and stirred.”  
“It’s almost like you don’t trust me,” Alec comments, refilling his bowl already.   
“How did you even survive before we were roommates in MI6 training and I started cooking double?”  
“Take-out and one-night stands who cooked breakfast in hopes that I wouldn’t kick them out.”  
“Because that’s the best way to get poisoned,” Q adds.   
“You survive off Q-Branch feeding you, tea, and bribing cookies out of Catering. I shudder to think of what you ate before I started cooking for three. Or four, given this one’s appetite.” James gestures at Alec, who flips him a rude gesture and returns to his food.   
“It worked for fifteen years,” Q shrugs.   
James and Alec fall silent, tableware set with a clink against their dishes. Q continues to eat, waiting for them to ask what they want to know.   
“Fifteen years?” Alec chokes out. “I thought they hired you to be R seven years ago.”  
“Well, sixteen years, now. I wasn’t counting the year I’ve been living with the two of you.”  
“We weren’t here that long ago, Q.”  
“I know that,” he says, staring down at his bowl. “I was here, after all. MI6 doesn’t recruit that young except in extenuating circumstances, so most agents go into the military and are recruited from there. Q-Branch recruits from the top of the class in certain degrees from certain universities.”  
“How old were you?” James asks.  
Q sucks in a deep breath that has both agents reaching across the table to lay a hand on top of one of his. “Nineteen.”  
“That’s it, we’re taking vacation time after this and taking you to our favorite places that we haven’t been banned from yet. You work too hard now and I bet you’ve continued to work this hard for nearly half your life.”  
“Somewhere safe,” James decides, “where we don’t have to worry as much about protecting you.”  
“Do I get a say in this?”  
“No,” they reply in unison, breaking the somber mood. Q tries, he really tries, but the giggles swell up inside his chest and spill out. He pushes his bowl away just in time to double over against the table, gasping for breath. After a few moments, Alec and James overcome their shock and join in.  
“We’re ridiculous people,” Alec gasps, “and can you imagine what M would say with two of his most dangerous weapons taking his Quartermaster overseas on vacation? He’d put a security team on reserve just waiting for something to explode!”  
“001 and Moneypenny would just happen to find business wherever we went, showing up on the beach or wandering around town or in the same restaurant to make sure we were appropriately pampering Q,” James adds. Alec dissolves into laughter, falling out of his chair, just as he was starting to get control of himself.   
“Oh, no, Mycroft would be unbearable. He’d have CCTV stalking us everywhere, with Anthea showing up where he can’t go.”  
“Wait, that’s him? I always thought that was you?” James’ brow furrows. “Your brother is a little creepy.”  
“And it wasn’t creepy when you thought I was doing it?”  
“You’re the Quartermaster. Your job is to know where we are at all times.”  
Q shrugs and finishes his jambalaya, complaining about the lack of dessert.


	18. Old Friend Make New Allies, or Before the Fuzzy Ducklings

_Ethos: Can’t bear to leave the old screen name, Pied Piper?_

_…_ Pied Piper _is typing…_

Q plays with one of his other computers, tracking the communications from the copycat’s scouts. One is, as he predicted, in New Orleans, with another one in Detroit and a third way out in the Appalachian Mountains. He’s really hoping not to end up in the middle of the winter somewhere cold. He has enough of the cold in London, and they don’t even get quite the same snow. 

_Pied Piper: Not quite as active as I was in our heydey, I’m afraid. When you disappeared, Cec, I took it as a sign to take a break._

_Pied Piper: If you’re reaching out now, you must need help. So long as I don’t end up in prison, I’ll do it._

Q smiles, firing off an email to R requesting that she revisit the file of one Renee de Sinque, who MI6 has been keeping tabs on but not going after by Q’s promise that she’s harmless. What he needs isn’t strictly legal, but if he can bring her in to MI6, it gets covered by the blanket of ‘we don’t want to know what you do’. Pied Piper is one of the few people who ever knew Moncrieff was male, one of the only ones he ever considered meeting in person. 

She is also, he knows now, a British transplant, in the United States because of her first husband and then staying there as not to move her daughter after he died. If he can make her an offer to join Q-Branch, MI6 will also take her daughter in and make sure that, no matter how successful Pied Piper is for them, that she gets the best education available. 

_Ethos: I’m working on something, an offer to work with me permanently. If you could keep the established Internet presence, I can restart._

_Pied Piper: Not happy with three respected screen names?_

_Ethos: Would you be, if you were me?_

_Pied Piper: Never. If you can make me a good deal, I’ll go be a spook. Dream for all of us, to get paid to do what we do best._

_Ethos: I’ll be in touch as soon as I can be._

Pied Piper _is offline._

His email chimes with R’s reply that M has approved him to approach Renee de Sinque. Brilliant. Now he just needs to draw up an offer to get a hacker nearly as brilliant as he is on his team, find his melodramatic arsehole of a brother before his ridiculously powerful stalker brother gets antsy, and find a genius bomber copying Silva’s antics. Oh, and do all of that while managing one lusty Double-0 who refuses to clean and another Double-0 who flirts with everything that moves and who is the definition of sexual tension. 

Not that he’s been looking, with them walking around in only towels in their flat, if that. James, who does more of the Caribbean missions for some reason that Q is sure must include blackmail, has a golden tan marred only by the pale lines of scars. Q’s read his file. He knows the story behind each and every one. Alec is paler, though not by much, which hides his scars a little better. Q read his file for the stories behind the old scars, but they’ve been friends long enough that he saw many of them when they were still fresh. 

Not that he’s ever looked, of course. 

“Damn it all, Alec Trevelyan!” James shouts from downstairs, followed by the rather distinctive thunk of a knife into the wood of… wait for the second one… doorframe. So much for keeping the place nice. And the fact that he’s familiar enough with the sound a knife makes in a doorframe to identify it from this far away is sad. 

“No reason to throw things, James!” 

“I turned around for three minutes and you overcooked the vegetables, mashed potatoes that were not to be mashed, and did your best to add ‘a little something’ to the steak rub that I will now have to entirely remake because I don’t trust that you weren’t sneakier that I saw.” James’ anger turns cold, which is good for his chances of stepping out without being impaled but bad for his chances of getting one of them to rub his shoulders and the other to make him endless cups of tea and popcorn with just the right balance of butter and salt. He was hoping to get James to rub his shoulders. He’s a little less sexual about it than Alec can’t help being and he does have Alec well trained in that popcorn, like Q’s tea, is one of the things Not To Be Trifled With.

What sounds like a plate shatters, then the sound of a knife into wood again accompanied by a yelp of pain. Not so much on the going downstairs part. 

“You can just bring my dinner up here,” he shouts, “because I like my life.”

Dead silence. 

“Sorry that James is being a prat,” Alec calls. 

He returns to his work, using Chaos to make it seem like his focus is somewhere in the Middle East while Logos stays entirely out of the problem. If all three are active, someone will suspect a trick. Chaos is big and flashy, perfect for a decoy, and used rarely enough and even more rarely as a decoy. At least, not a decoy for him doing other things. He’s usually creating a diversion for agents in the same location so they can be retrieved. 

_R: Mystery hacker taking out the target I was supposed to be working on without leaving a trace in the systems. Do I need to take your computer privileges away?_

_Q: Need I remind you that firstly, you aren’t my mother, and secondly, I’m your boss?_

_R: Poor baby, thinking he’s actually in charge of me. Don’t make me call the babysitters._

_Q: I got bored._

_R: Refresh an old woman’s memory. You do have 006 and 007 with you, right?_

_Q: They’re throwing knives. I’m not getting involved._

_R: Boring. Right._

“You can come down, Q,” James calls. “You can even pick the movie and Alec won’t complain through the entire thing.”

Alec says something that might be agreement, but is muffled oddly. 

Which means trouble, which means he ought to join them and sort it all out. Alec doesn’t do quiet. He’s a constant babble of chatter that they mostly tune out. He even talks in his sleep, perfect grammar with utterly nonsensical meanings.

Alec is sitting on the couch, duct tape across his mouth and shooting aliens in sullen silence. Q doesn’t want to know what James threatened him with to make him leave the tape alone. 

He also doesn’t want to know how long James has been planning this, to have pale blue duct tape with fuzzy ducklings on it actually on hand. 

“It was cooperation and the ducks or complete immobilization and unicorns,” James informs him gravely when he finally sets Q’s plate in front of him, raising his free hand to show two rolls of duct tape looped over his forearm. Q insists on dress-down dinners, where he is required to be the most formal person at the meal, so James is in his workout clothes and Alec is in sweatpants and his duckling duct tape. 

“How is he supposed to eat?”

“When he realizes I’m serious, he’ll go find the cling wrap, put his plate in the fridge, and put the cling wrap away. I know the petty tricks, Alec, they don’t work. He’s gone for days without eating. A few hours won’t hurt him.”

Alec grumbles something indecipherable from behind his duct tape. 

James smiles. 

“Movie?”

Q opens his laptop, hunting for something he feels like watching while James fetches the HDMI cord for him. James has movies on DVD here, one of those touches to make it look less like a temporary living arrangement in case somebody comes looking, but his taste is generally terrible. 

James rejects everything he tries, but Q gets clever and pulls something up. James shrugs, saying he’s never heard of it so it can’t be nearly as terrible as Q’s other selections. Alec throws a pillow, questioning Q’s taste. Q raises an eyebrow, jerking his head at James’ back, and Alec lets out a half-strangled laugh that ends with him choking on air. 

“I’m taking the tape off, James,” Q calls over to the kitchen. 

“On your head be it if he gets annoying,” James replies. 

“I’ll make the popcorn, James, you can come massage Q’s shoulders,” Alec informs him with an exaggerated wink to Q and a caress along his cheekbone. 

“He’s being helpful,” James tells him as they get settled in. “He’s doing the _dishes_.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Q curls up in James’ lap, sighing in delight as the tension is eased from his shoulders and neck. This is why he tells Eve to piss off when she comments on their non-traditional intimacy since he started living with Alec and James. Alec has always been handsy with everyone, but Eve claims James never was. Seductive, yes, but not handsy. 

“It’s a frightening thing.”

Q shrugs, leaning forwards enough to make himself more comfortable with his laptop. 

“Put it away, Q, it’s movie night and you’re supposed to be relaxing,” James punctuates his words with a press of his thumb into a particularly tense knot. Q shifts away from it and James’ fingers bring him back, fingers wrapping around to brush at his collarbones while his thumbs work behind his neck. Q wrinkles his nose, but moves his laptop off to one side after clicking play.

“What are we watching, anyways?”

Alec returns at that moment, balancing a massive bowl of popcorn in one hand and moving Q’s laptop completely off the couch with the other, a grin splitting his features. “Rocky Horror Picture Show. You’re going to love it, James. Very dignified.”


	19. Movie Night: The Rocky Horror Picture Show

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, it actually starts to get slashy here. I know, about time, but don't say I didn't warn you about the plotty plot that tends to take over despite how I like to create worlds, not write plots.

 

James questions Alec’s appraisal by the beginning of Dammit Janet, which Q sings along to and Alec begrudgingly joins in, using his ridiculous falsetto for Janet’s parts. Q dissolves into laughter as the song ends. 

James then completely denies starting to hum along to the Time Warp, but Q’s leaning against his chest whenever he isn’t singing and he can feel it. 

Alec starts to sneak glances at James and bite his lip to stifle his laughter when Sweet Transvestite starts. 

“No costume budget, much? It isn’t like it’s hard to find a vampire costume,” James complains. “Did they just waste their costume budget on everyone else?” He doesn’t comment on the heels.

Alec and Q dissolve into giggles. 

_“I’m not much of a man by the light of day,”_ Dr. Frank N Furter croons, _“but by night I’m one hell of a lover,”_.

James goes silent.

“Q, you can’t be serious.”

“The eyebrow is magical, James. Magical.”

It just goes downhill from there. Alec drags Q’s feet into his lap, hands roaming over his calves, kneading and drawing patterns that start out as nonsense and turn in to the occasional word in Russian. James moves along his arms, then down his back, creeping around his sides in infinitesimally small fractions of movement that make Q’s breath catch for that one moment before he retreats, hands sliding back into decidedly safe territory. 

Except it isn’t safe, not at all, not with two of the most dangerous men in the world making their interest clearly known, with both of them staking a claim on him without any additional competition between them, and most of all with both of them waiting on his word, his choice, before they will do aught more than hint. 

His choice.

He hasn’t gotten very much of that, not ever. His family is composed of strong personalities, all of whom run roughshod over each other and he found it easier to accept it and sink into the shadows. And then he became government property, his life not his own, not even when he’s away from the office. 

And if anyone can understand the weight of that responsibility, it is the men on either side of him. 

“My choice,” he murmurs, turning to glance at the screen, watching Janet pace her bedroom in the mansion and the opening door. “You’re making it all my choice.”

“Always,” James tells him as his hands sweep forwards ever so slowly again, following the bottom of his rib cage and retreating up to the back of his shoulders, a slow, methodical dissolution of all his tension from sitting at a computer only to replace it with a warmer, shakier sort of tension. 

“Entirely your choice, Q,” Alec concurs. “You can let me, you can let James, you can let both of us. I don’t mind sharing, not with James. I trust him to protect you, to take care of you, when I’m on mission. I know he feels the same way.” Behind his back, James rumbles with agreement. “I want to take you apart, Q, leave you writhing for another touch, another kiss, another press of skin on skin, and make you lose that iron-clad control of yours, and then I want you back in my ear on missions, making sure I return home to you.”

Alec leans in, fingers settling down one by one across the back of his knees, speaking in a hushed cascade of words with his breath tickling a stray curl lying across his face. James tilts his face against Q’s neck, drawing a line from scapula to jaw. Q takes a deep breath, chest shuddering against James’ hands, and his eyes flick down to Alec’s lips. 

Desire heats Alec’s eyes, and Q jerks out a nod, not trusting his own voice. Alec’s right hand drops to James’ leg, bracing himself as his left starts the glacial slide up his thigh. James is the steady presence, keeping him grounded while Alec’s move lights up nerve endings and dims out the constant clamor of data in his mind, leaving him entirely in the moment and on fire. 

_“Janet!”_

_“Dr. Scott!”_

_“Janet!”_

_“Brad!”_

_“Rocky!”_

_“Umph.”_

Alec and James look at the TV. Alec’s face is a mishmash of shock, horror, and amusement at the suddenly-loud intrusion. Q wishes he could see James’ face right now. 

James drops his hand away from Q’s side, reaching under his leg to dig out the remote from where it ended up half-hidden in the couch cushions, the volume button just under where Alec was leaning. 

And then the giggles swell up within him, spilling over before he has a chance to worry about things like propriety or not looking a fool in front of two men he just agreed that yes, he does want to add physical intimacy to their relationships.

They have always been a problem for him, the inappropriate giggles, any time he wasn’t constantly watching his reactions. Mycroft has them under control, if he were ever prone to them. Sherlock never cared about the appropriateness of his sporadic giggles, not as children, and from what he’s seen of Sherlock’s version of adult behavior, probably not even now. 

“MI6’s most dangerous,” James comments, “with international reputations for explosions and seduction, and we end up sitting on the _remote_. Alec, I’m ashamed of ourselves.”

Alec rears back, not quite returning to his end of the couch, but taking his weight off of James. “Speak for yourself. I let my abs do the seduction for me.”

“They are very nice abs,” Q tells him. 

“Thank you. Would you like to see them?”

Q starts giggling again. “Does that actually work?”

“Sometimes. People are shallow, Q.” James lets out a serious sigh, releasing Q to move as he will. “You ought to consider that we can’t be faithful to you. At least, I can’t, and Alec is required to take all measures necessary too, but his missions are different. I’m sent on honeypot missions, you know that, but I often find myself in a place where I can’t finish my mission without seducing someone to serve as an ally or information.”

Q watches the movie for a little longer, at the dramatic gasps as Frank N Furter whips the tablecloth off, but doesn’t move from James’ lap. Alec turns to face the movie, sitting at James’ feet and returning to stroking tamely along Q’s calves, his hand moving almost absentmindedly. 

It’s like standing on a precipice, his next sentence, because he can feel the brave fronts crumbling. If he retreats to safety, to Agents and Quartermaster, he might lose more than just their offer. If he takes the leap, he might end up with a broken heart and a lot of awkwardness when running missions. 

It’s the biggest choice he’s ever made, but in the end there is no real alternative. 

“So long as you come home,” he says, voice surprising him by coming out as a whisper. He clears it, repeating himself a little louder. “So long as in the end, you always come back to me. Both of you. I may let you go on these missions and seduce targets, but you are mine.”

The venom in the last word surprises him almost as much as the quiet did. 

“Yours,” they agree. 

“Find somewhere comfortable,” James instructs, pushing Q off his lap. “I’m going to clean up while Alec runs a perimeter check. Go where you want inside the house, we’ll find you.” 

“It’ll be fun.”


	20. Scars and Secrets

 

Q considers hiding, just to make them track him down, and decides that would be best saved for sometime when he has more than a single house to hide in and when there isn’t the looming threat of a copycat terrorist who- apart from whatever his sinister agenda may be, because they all have sinister agendas- is a danger to Sherlock. In the end, he goes to the room James and Alec have been sharing, the bigger room. If they’re to do this three to a bed, they will need a lot more room. 

Before he can second-guess himself, he strips and folds his clothes neatly on top of their dresser, then buries himself in the neatly made bed. James was the last one to sleep here, then. He knows for a fact that Alec never makes his and James can’t not make his. He tends to straighten his covers, when he has a moment, only actually making his bed when he washes his bedding. 

He buries his head in the pillows, hiding the red flush creeping up on his cheeks despite being alone in the room for now. He can hear the clank of pans and dishes with the underlying wash of the faucet, obscured every time James starts humming to himself. He doesn’t hear Alec at all, which is a good sign. Noise would mean trouble on the perimeter which would mean fighting and possibly running and a lot of not getting off for any of them. Well, for him. They get off on the adrenaline, he figures, or they wouldn’t do it.

Two sets of footsteps stop outside the door but do not open it Should he have left it open? He doesn’t want to shut them out, but that’s just habit from walking into a room intending to take his clothes off, especially since he lives with roommates. 

“On three?”

“On three.”

James laughs. “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot,” and then one of them curses. He doesn’t have time to deduce which one before the door opens. 

“Hello,” he hears himself saying, and winces. Could he be less sexy right now? 

“Hello,” James replies, undressing in a slow flow of constant movement, the heat in his gaze carefully banked behind his cool reserve. 

“Hrwo,” Alec manages, yanking his shirt over his head gracelessly and getting tangled in it, giving Q a lovely view as he tries blindly to get himself untangled. James stops, shirt slipping down and getting caught around his elbows, to enjoy the view with him.

“If someone doesn’t help me,” Alec threatens, still muffled and struggling, “I will leave and sulk and make this awkward for everyone.”

“Well, we wouldn’t want that.” James helps him loose, letting Alec continue his hurried removal of his clothes. Q can’t even really call it a strip, not when it is a flurry of hands and cloth hitting the floor. Alec joins him on the bed before James even loses his trousers, lying on top of the duvet. 

“I want to see, Q. Can I see?” Alec’s fingers tease at the edge of the sheet pulled up to his collarbones. He dips to one collarbone, tracing it with his lips and again with his tongue, before James makes a disapproving noise. 

“I won, James,” Alec argues. 

“You still have to wait for me. We agreed, Alec. Together or not at all, not unless Q wanted it that way.”

Alec flops on his back. “Hurry up, then.”

“I’m enjoying the show,” Q offers. 

“Don’t encourage him,” Alec argues, but drags one of Q’s hands out and traces the bones delicately instead of making another move. 

Q reaches for the newest scar on James’ body, not yet subsided into the pale lines that line the rest of his body. Last month’s trip to Venezuela, permanently memorialized on his body alongside so many others. James lets him trace it briefly, settling in on his other side. 

“May I?” he asks, reaching for the covers. Q nods, and Alec’s hands are on him as soon as James pulls the covers back. He traces the line of his ribs, along the outside of his flank, and circles the mark on his hip with a little sound of confused dismay. 

Q drops his head back, letting them look without actually looking himself. He agonized over it, years ago. It was a constant reminder of everything he lost, of his new life, of his non-existence. If it weren’t for the threat they made about covering it up or his disinclination to show anyone, he would have had it covered up years ago. Trying to forget, however, does not mean that he doesn’t know every single line, even without someone’s finger- _neatly trimmed nails gun callous right hand James_ \- tracing them. 

There are two marks, actually, this one and the one on his shoulder they made a few years later upon his graduation and promotion to R. A reminder, they didn’t have to tell him, that even with power in MI6 he was still a government tool, that MI6 was his prison cell, no matter how comfortable. The first was a labyrinth encircled by an ouroborous, all in stylized lines that transferred well. In the very center, his old initials are monogrammed and struck out. It isn’t a small mark.

“Q, this isn’t a tattoo,” Alec informs him quietly. 

“I know.” A tattoo would be a lot easier to explain, would make him a lot more comfortable with his body. Scars… well, the one other time he tried to get nude with someone without the cover of darkness and haste, it squicked them out badly enough that he avoided the entire area for months, resigning himself to drunkenly fumbled handjobs and solitude. 

“Please tell me I’m wrong, Q,” James’ voice cracks on his name. 

Q draws a deep breath, regretting it when he’s overwhelmed by the remaining sense memories from when they marked him. 

“I’m sorry. I get it if this is a dealbreaker.”

James bolts upright while Alec drags him into his arms, crushing Q to his chest. 

“You think we want you less because someone else hurt you.” James steels himself. “Somebody _branded_ you, Q, and since it isn’t in your file, I’m sickened that the government we serve had to have done it.”

“It wasn’t the government. Well, not officially, and half the people responsible aren’t even in the government. It was the Grandmasters’ reminder about my… position.” He curls in to Alec, letting them see the mark on his shoulder before they have another incident upon finding it. 

That one is not much smaller, but the lines are thinner and took a lot longer to heal. This one was carved into his skin with a scalpel deep enough to scar, but the lines are barely visible now. It would be beautiful, had he chosen it, a tipped over pawn on a chessboard, crosshatching- _the burn of each slice, neatly parallel, and he had been quiet so far but when they laid the scalpel orthogonal to the first line and dragged he screamed and the White Rook laughed_ \- James’ lips touch his skin, dragging him shivering out of the vivid memories. 

“Are they still alive? The ones who did this to you.” 

James’ tone is conversational, almost, as he fetches pants for each of them, tugging his own on before dragging Q’s up his hips because Alec refuses to let him go. James sighs, helping Alec into his own pants too and turning off the lights, before returning to Q’s back and tucking them under the covers. 

“Some of them are. Three of the ones who took me from custody to prepare me for delivery to MI6, who were involved in my…” he lifts his hip slightly, not enough to be visible under the covers, but that doesn’t matter with both of them pressed up against him so close, “well, they retired from the Grandmasters under pressure from the Black side. The official government side. Two met with mysterious accidents about a month later.”

“Do tell.”

“One of them’s entire identity was destroyed by an American hacking group who was never identified. He crashed his car a week after that, his blood alcohol level through the roof. The other one was taken out by an equally unidentifiable hitman. The bullet was never recovered.”

“And the one that got away?”

“She was dabbling in information, drawing the wrath of the Grandmasters now that she was no longer one of them. They had her sent back to terrorists who wanted her head in a political trade, but someone interfered. Last I heard, she got herself in to witness protection over here.” 

He’s never been angrier at Mycroft for keeping Sherlock in the dark about his survival until that day. If Sherlock knew the truth of what Irene Adler did to him, knew that it happened at all, she would have been dead on a slab long before foiling Mycroft’s Flight of the Dead. 

“How many, in total?”

“Including the two who are dead, there were five involved in the first event. Two of them, the two who Mycroft can’t touch, were behind the second.”

Alec growls, actually growls, holding Q tighter. Q melts into his embrace, feeling grateful and not stifled when James crowds up against his back, keeping him surrounded in safety and care. 

“Do you still want me?” he whispers, half-hoping they can’t hear him.

“Of course we do. Just not tonight, not when you need protecting and being put back together more than being taken apart, and not when we both want to hunt down and murder every single one of them who did this to you.” 

“Will you stay, anyways?” Alec pleads, loosening his grip so Q can look at them both. The shock is fading slower than it would for their own trauma- he’s seen enough of that for a lifetime, but knows he’ll see more- but it is fading. 

“I will.”

Slowly, he drifts to sleep with Alec’s arms tight around him and James pressing reverent butterfly kisses to his hair, his cheekbone, his shoulder. 

“I’ll patrol first,” James whispers as the dreams take him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, wasn't where I intended this chapter to go, and I'm a terrible tease.
> 
> Sorry not sorry.


	21. The Shades of the Past

 

The nightmares don’t surprise him. 

He started working to exhaustion to prove himself, continued because of the nightmares when he wasn’t utterly wrung out and collapsing, and then it just became a habit. It kept the nightmares at bay, so it wasn’t all bad, and saved some lives when he was there for immediate response when unexpected things came up. 

They aren’t a surprise, but they are more vivid than he remembers. 

Irene Adler, the White Queen, tracing a line across his hip before their pawns bared it for the brand, her long red fingernails digging in to his jaw as he made her look directly at her. She wasn’t much older than he was, but cold and beautiful like a diamond with none of the warmth he expected from people. 

The dead ones are shades in his nightmares, ghostly mirages of themselves, because they are no threat any longer and they haven’t been for years. Even Adler doesn’t scare him that much. She was cold and cruel, yes, but the Grandmasters ate her up and spat her out while he thrived in MI6. 

The White Rook, completely nonchalant as he holds the iron to no-longer-Algernon’s skin. Dream-Q blinks and he’s carving into his shoulder, dragged away every once in a while to noisily kiss the White King. He knows a face in shadow, and hands. 

The White King, who he only knows as a shadowy figure that he never saw directly, is a voice commanding them all, enjoying his pain. The White Rook, he could still recognize if he saw him, but the White King could be anywhere. Could be anyone. And he’d never know until they took him and hurt him again.

“Ssh,” James comforts him, voice breaking through the layers of the nightmares. “We’re here. They won’t touch you.”

He eases back into regular dreams, though the specter of the White King stands in his suit at the edge of each dreamscape, smiling a manic grin that doesn’t reach his eyes.

Q creeps back into consciousness incrementally, staying in that lovely place between waking and sleeping where everything is simple and perfect. There are two bodies in bed with him, he notices idly, which makes him feel safer, knowing they feel comfortable enough to both be here with him. 

He stretches at much as he can without breaking Alec’s hold on him, pointing his toes and tightening all his muscles almost to the point of pain before relaxing into Alec’s chest. 

Alec shifts them closer together, rubbing a rather impressive erection into the cleft of Q’s ass, and mumbles into his hair. Q freezes up, then sighs in happiness. He never gets to sleep next to anyone, not with security regulations and safety of upper level MI6 execs and oh, the fact that there is a design branded into his hip. 

“You speak Latin in your sleep.” James is sitting against the headboard, scrolling through something on one of Q’s tablets. He sets it aside, kissing Q’s free hand as he returns to bed. 

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s cute.”

James kisses him then, gentle and chaste, pulling away to laugh softly at Q’s truly abysmal bedhead. When he leans in again, the kiss turns hot and urgent, reminding Q of exactly how wound up they all were last night before his past interrupted. 

“Let me check for new intel before we do anything,” Q manages before diving back in to nip at James’ bottom lip, teasing him back into another kiss. 

“I already did. Nothing new, Q.” 

“Good,” he breathes, letting James kiss him senseless, pressing him back against Alec. Alec holds him tighter, fitting them together better without being entirely awake. Q can pinpoint the exact moment that changes, when Alec’s hands shift down to Q’s hips and the rolling of his hips becomes purposeful. 

It isn’t the type of earth-shattering, no-going-back, debauchment that they had promised him the night before, but in that moment, it was perfect. They set up an alternating rhythm, James dragging their cocks alongside each other when Alec moved away, keeping Q suspended on the precipice of not quite enough. Alec licked and nipped along his throat, finding a spot behind his ear that made him shiver and jerk between their bodies, while James kissed him breathless. When a hand crept to play with his chest and another wound into his hair and yet another hand traced nails against the inside of his thigh, the deduction that should have come automatically doesn’t come at all. 

But he does, caught by surprise when they let him have all the sensation they were denying him, and sags between them. Alec reaches across Q to lazily finish James off, rubbing against Q until he comes across his back. Q settles back into the bed that is really just barely big enough for them to be doing this, blissed out on endorphins and not yet sticky enough to care. 

Alec talks, but it is just his normal chatter about everything he’s thinking at the moment, which is all rather flattering right now. _God, Q, I’ve been telling you how amazing your ass is for years but I knew nothing until today. Glorious._ His tendency to talk is annoying when Q is listening in on his missions, but soothing and normal now. 

Finally, he shoves himself up and climbs over James to take a shower, not banning them from joining him but not outright inviting them, either. And he’s not going to leave any hot water. Probably not the best etiquette, but nobody went through proper manners for sleeping with his two roommates while hunting a terrorist who apparently has his not-quite-dead brother’s life in his hands.

God, his life got complicated quickly. 

He has to check his own emails, despite what James told him, and make sure his software to alert him to the right call is functioning properly by running the data himself. And contact Pied Piper again once R sends him MI6’s official offer. Or unofficial offer, he supposes, since they can’t make an official move until Renee de Sinque is back in Britain or at the very least in the Commonwealth. 

He also needs to have them seen out in the community, just in case the terrorists have extra security here for their impending move. They need to look like tourists renting an old house in New Orleans, which means they need to see the sights. And keep both James and Alec out of Bourbon Street, because they’d start some sort of stupid drinking contest and he really doesn’t want both his bodyguards stumbling this late in the game. 

The bathroom door opens, releasing all of his nice hot steam, and someone slips in. James, since he stands there on the other side of the curtain silently. His loyal guardian, Q thinks, standing guard without even taking a look or making any further moves. He didn’t really think about how overprotective this would make them, but it makes perfect sense. All the Double-0s already saw Q as theirs, but now James and Alec know he is _theirs, theirs, theirs_ \- he can almost hear the clamor of their thoughts like Sherlock always claimed he could. 

“If you’re just going to stand there, you can at least wash my hair. It’ll take forever for me to get the tangles out.”

“Bodyguard, not your servant.”

Wrong deduction, there. Alec, not James. He forgets, sometimes, that Alec is capable of being quiet, too.

“I blame you for the tangles. And I might just leave hot water for you if you help.”

“You should blame James,” Alec tells him, stepping up to the far end of the curtain anyways and reaching for the shampoo. 

“And why is that?” Q turns his back on Alec, wincing at the initial yank on his hair. 

“Because that means not blaming me.”

“Brilliant reasoning, that. And you call yourself a secret agent.” Q pulls away to rinse his hair, dragging his fingers through it to check how Alec did. Alec reaches out, tracing the lines across his shoulder, letting his hand fall back to his side limply. 

“I want to kill them, you know. To hurt them for ever hurting you. And I know people say that, that it doesn’t mean anything, that they wouldn’t ever do it, but I would and it terrifies me. Not the idea of blood on my hands- god, I ought to be used to that by now- but I don’t want to lose your regard by acting on it. Don’t ever tell me who they are, the ones who are still alive, or where they are, because I can’t promise I won’t kill them to make me feel like you’re finally, finally, safe.”

Q finishes his shower in silence. He doesn’t quite know how to reply to that one. Does he want them dead? Yes. Does he hold it against Mycroft or the hackers who helped him for taking the other two down? Not in the slightest. He still owes that group of hackers a favor for it. Does that mean he feels fine about his… his lovers, he guesses, killing someone simply because they hurt him in the past? Not particularly. 

Good thing he doesn’t really have ex-boyfriends, and the one guy he went on one date with was found guilty of every last minor illegality on every single technicality, prompting a move out of the country just because Mycroft didn’t like his attitude when he told Q that he wasn’t interested, thanks for dinner anyways, you’re boring. He can only imagine what James and Alec would do about angry ex-boyfriends. That position of ‘thank the circuitry that I don’t have to deal with that’ usually falls to if Sherlock found out about an ugly breakup. 

Besides, he’d rather like to take down the White Rook and the White King himself. He doesn’t care as much about Adler any longer. She’s done for, powerless, and with enough people on the white and black sides of the law out for her head that she’s going to stay that way. He could always sic Sherlock on her, after how all that turned out the first time. 

“Q?”

“What? Towel.” Alec holds the towel up for him, letting him dry himself once he yanks it from Alec’s hand. He does in fact have work to do today, much as the Double-0s seem to be treating it as some sort of vacation. 

Well, they sort of treat all their missions as one-half vacation, one-half license to make things explode that were never intended to explode and some that were. And not bring back his tech. Which he appreciates when it comes down to learning exactly what makes his tech break, but not when it comes to the requisite paperwork. And Cait isn’t enough of a pushover to do all the paperwork for him. 

He tried, once, to convince her. She and Danielle locked him in his office for three weeks with a safety shower and half bathroom, a cat flap for food, and a weekly gift through the cat flap of new clothes. 

He upgraded both of their computers and promised them each a week’s vacation to somewhere of their choosing, paid for out of the Q-Branch emergency budget, before they let him go. He was only R at the time, but Boothroyd clapped him on the back, told him not to miss any more meetings, and named it all a learning experience. 

Boothroyd’s computer magically caught a nasty virus that played the most obnoxious pop songs through his office’s speaker system whenever he logged on and entered a password constantly changing by a mathematical formula into the mute button. It also automatically connected to the speaker systems in any conference room or anybody else’s offices outside of Q-Branch. He made all of Q-Branch exempt because he couldn’t well leave himself, Cait, and Danielle exempt without tipping someone off. 

Not that anyone doubted it was him, anyways, once the techs couldn’t find anything wrong with his computer and it happened again on another computer and another one. Nobody thought to look at Boothroyd’s official MI6 account. Would’ve worked on any computer he logged in to. 

Still smiling, he drops the towel and wanders into the room before remembering that this isn’t his bedroom and absolutely none of his clothes- except the ones he wore yesterday- are here. He still has a thing about clothes, hates re-wearing things unless he can help it, and much as neither James nor Alec are very fond of his style it is a style. 

Not like they haven’t seen it all, he decides as Alec turns on the bathroom fan to be rid of the steam and walks out behind him. Out of the corner of his eye, Alec is very clearly ogling him, taking a nice look at his ass since his marked hip is hidden. He hopes they’ll get over it. It happened, now it’s over with. 

Alec remembers his manners when Q gets to his own room, making some excuse about going to help- _hinder, annoy_ \- James in the kitchen when Q gives him the look. 

Clothes, then food, then computer, he reminds himself.

He checks his computer first anyways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back into the workweek on the railroad, so it'll be a couple days before I can write the next chapter.


	22. The Players are New, but the Game Continues

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY, so this chapter is getting a little dark, so I feel I ought to add some sort of warnings for here on forwards. Skip the rest of this paragraph if you're worried about spoilers. Still here? Okay. Sherlock is in a bit of a dark place, and my Sherlock isn't nice to himself in his head. I don't think this really falls under any trigger warnings or I would've put something in the tags, but please, if you read anything and think it might be triggering to somebody, tell me so I can put a warning here or put something in the tags. 
> 
> Any questions or comments can be left for me here or directed to my Tumblr (nagapdragon.tumblr.com) and as always, I welcome your feedback- it can only make me a better writer!
> 
> Thank you for reading so far- I never even expected this many people to read this, and every comment and every time someone leaves kudos it puts a smile on my face!

 

_Cold._

Muffled voices- muffled by distance? Walls? He doesn’t know. 

_You have to be able to deduce better than that. What sort of detective are you? Anybody could get ‘cold’ in this situation._

Sherlock shifts, reaching for data without making it look like any more than unconscious movement. There has to be something. There’s always something. 

Finished concrete floors, but old ones, chipped and worn under his bare hands and feet. The cold is seeping up through them, sinking into his bones through the clothes- rags, now, the old Sherlock wouldn’t be caught dead in them, good thing old Sherlock died on the rooftop with Moriarty- somewhere much colder than where they finally tracked him down. Not that it is difficult to get colder than Arizona at this time of year. 

This is somewhere truly cold, somewhere deep in winter’s grasp. Too difficult to smuggle him across the border and they haven’t done anything that tricky with him, so still in the country. 

It’s a big country. Even that leaves all the northern contiguous states and most of the eastern ones, if he remembers what the lady in the cafe was telling him- how long ago? He doesn’t know how long they’ve had him. He tried to send an alert to Mycroft when they were getting close, was he successful?

Best not to count on Mycroft coming to the rescue. What a diplomatic nightmare it would be, and not worth the trouble. 

_They’re coming to get you…_ Always Mycroft in his Mind Palace, Mycroft sitting in the living room late at night telling horror stories to little boys who wouldn’t go to sleep… _They’re coming to get you, Sher-lock._

_Not Sherlock!_ he wants to scream, but even if he were willing to give himself away like that his voice is frozen in his throat, stolen by the cold and the pain and the thirst and the _hunger_ , please not the hunger, it hurts it hurts it hurts-

“He’s awake.”

He doesn’t know the voice, deep and warm, and for a moment he lets himself believe he’s been rescued despite the evidence of his body, the double restraint of rope and handcuffs holding wrists behind his back and the scratch of rope against ankles raw from trying to hurry along at their pace. If this were one of those awful movies John likes watching, the man would have a cold voice, better to know him as one of the villains. 

_Oh, John, I left hoping to one day return, but you cannot hate me any more for dying here than for making you watch my magic trick, naught but an illusion, like Mycroft’s omniscience, and you saw through that, did you not?_

“Bring him to me.” A woman’s voice, Irene? No, not Irene, she wanted to win by his own folly, by his own choices leading him ever further into her game, a blind man walking through the play but entirely his own downfall. Irene wouldn’t do this to him, wouldn’t win through force and pain and _no not the cold please not the cold I can’t think in this cold_. 

Hands lift him up, carrying him closer to the woman, he assumes, but all he can see is the expanse of concrete floor- once blue, now worn variegated grey with splashes of soaked-in brown- nothing fresh, some drips and drag marks, some with chips that could easily be caused by gunshots in the center of the spread, would be fascinating if he weren’t likely to become one of them. 

Hands, rough hands, _callous right hand trigger finger not on left weakness weakness recognize and catalog don’t solve the crime, save the life, my life_ lift his chin to look at a woman sitting on a pile of wooden pallets, some of them half-covered in tarps and others breaking and decaying beneath her. She smiles, _no not Irene, more like Moriarty this one, balancing that fine line between sanity and insanity so tightly that not even he can predict which side she’ll dance across to,_ and the hands shift him to kneel in front of her so they can retreat somewhere and give them a modicum of privacy. 

Her accent rolls off his mind as if non-existent. What little he’s heard. She’s talking now, but he’s not really listening, letting the slow burble of deductions rise to the surface of his stagnant mind when they once struck with the swiftness of lightning and the reverberation of thunderous understanding. He’s spent too long here for this accent to be unremarkable, it would stand out at home, the unaccented accent of the television and radio announcers, originating in the states belonging to the Midwestern region- 

_Location._

Did the other one speak with the same non-accent accent? _He’s awake_. He thinks so, thinks when he used to know, and isn’t that a shame. 

Hair cut short in some sort of style he saw in the women’s magazines but doesn’t remember the name of, straightened with a precise curl inwards at the ends. This confrontation was not hurried in the slightest, not with perfect hair and makeup and those shoes. Red lipstick, expertly applied not to wear off on her teeth while she speaks, signifier of sexual confidence or a desire for attention, in this case, a statement piece, much as with the matching dress hugging every curve and the coat sitting with her purse. He ought to know something about dramatic coats. 

“You think I’m willing to let you sit there and ignore me?” She hops off the pallets, heels clicking steadily _no change in pace no sign of stress_ across the floor. “I asked you a question.”

_Leave me alone, mind palace, John always left me alone when I was in my mind palace-_ he croaks out some sort of sound that started as ‘mind palace’ but gets caught in his throat, syllables stacking up on top of each other until no longer recognizable- _I need data, give me data, where am I where am I where am I?_

She places two fingers under his chin, pressing him backwards until his back is arched as far as he can go without tipping over or breaking, leaning over to speak to him face to face. Young, so young, he doesn’t ever remember being that young, why is that?

Oh right. The cocaine.

“And what to do with you, hmm? You’re useless to me like this. I’ll give you one chance, Sherlock Holmes, to behave like a good little guest.” She leans closer, free hand brushing the hair away from his ear until her lips brush the same spot. “Would you like to ever be warm again? If so, best do as I say and remember that I’m no fool. I don’t trust you, and so you’ll get no leeway from me.”

“Why,” he croaks out, twisting away from her fingers to cough and nearly toppling himself over, “why are you standing here if you don’t trust me?”

“And send them to look for a young black woman here? Good luck with that.” She releases him as quickly as she grabbed him, plucking orange hand sanitizer from her purse and squirting a gracious amount into her palm. “Boys, take him to a room. And get him a shower and something appropriate for him to wear to attend me at dinner soon.”

_The game is on,_ he tells himself, feeling that rush of a new puzzle, a new challenge, despite the fact that his body- _the transport_ \- will need rest. 

Unfortunate, that. 

_No,_ he thinks as they haul him to his feet and take him to another car, singular in the wear and tear and rust worn body, but absolutely unremarkable if he’s in the part of the country he thinks he is, _the game I knew has changed._

 


	23. Next Moves

Q’s surprised yelp brings Alec and James running, Alec with a gun in his hands- where the hell did he pull that from, he certainly didn’t have a gun with him ten minutes ago in the bathroom with Q, he was naked, Q would have noticed- and James is wielding two kitchen knives. 

“I know where we’re going next,” he says, watching them make a sweep of the room anyways. “The call came in. How do you like winter?”

“Winter where?” Alec asks, knowing enough to be a little more wary about Q’s delight in the question. He complained about the cold once, saying he’d like to be sent somewhere warm for a change, and Q grinned the entire time before sending him to the Sahara. 

“Don’t sound like you’re going to be attacked, Q, it puts my nerves on edge,” James warns, “and please remember that we didn’t pack for winter.”

“Packing. Packing is for people who don’t make as much money as we do. And don’t deny it, either of you, because I know how much your salary is and I can easily cut it down to whatever you pretend it is, and Mycroft will let my little indiscretion fall into the cracks in the government annals.”

“Your brother terrifies me.”

“Has he pulled the kidnapping act yet?”

James shakes his head no. Alec nods. Q grins.

“Soon as you started coming over regularly to play games. He impressed upon me the importance of making tea the right way, giving you a safe space, and oh, that if I hurt you I would immediately be given a suicide mission harsh enough that there would be not a chance of managing to survive.” Alec twirls his gun with a flourish that made Q redesign it two years ago to avoid accidentally shooting people he didn’t mean to shoot- namely, Q-Branch when trying out new weaponry. He still hates when Alec does that, and from the way James switches his knives to a single hand and slaps Alec’s hand down, he does too. 

“Your turn is coming, James. It’s a sign of how busy Mycroft must be with Sherlock’s stunt and the aftermath of Silva for the entire government that he hasn’t kidnapped you yet. He got to Sherlock’s flatmate before he’d even actually moved in with him.” Mycroft would have gotten to John quicker except Q was using the CCTV system at the moment and had safeguards keeping everyone else out so no other hackers could trace back to him before he could hide his tracks. His monthly delivery of Mummy’s desserts, slightly stale because she sent them to Mycroft and they don’t fit his diet, plus the odds and ends Mycroft usually thinks he needs after Anthea snoops around his flat, was delayed two weeks before Mycroft relented. 

And then promptly bought Q a perfectly tailored, expensive suit that he’s desperately trying not to think about how Mycroft had the proper measurements for, sending Anthea to bully him in to it and take him to the kind of expensive place where everyone else is constantly watching, the type of place Mycroft frequents and both he and Sherlock find stifling. Anybody who says Mycroft isn’t childishly petty has clearly never met him. 

“I look forward to the kidnapping.”

“Good. Please don’t hurt Anthea. She actually is my sister now, and once I got over the whole arresting me at Christmas dinner part, I’m quite fond of her. Alec, tell James what I did to you after you broke her arm at your kidnapping.”

Alec hangs his head. “You locked me out of my flat for a week, then had me sent on a mission with a paperclip and two rubber bands.”

James starts to say something, then stops, then starts again. “You sent him out with a paperclip and two rubber bands?”

“He broke Anthea’s arm.” Q hides a smile behind his laptop, checking his official MI6 email for the contract Cait was going to draw up for him. He’d like to meet with Pied Piper before leaving the area, make her MI6’s offer and get her officially on his side before confronting their terrorist friends. And get her, an unknown, searching in to Moriarty. Sure, the man shot himself, but Q wants to know how far-reaching his empire is and what he had on Sherlock to make him jump. The fact that Mycroft couldn’t stop it, couldn’t protect Sherlock, is worrying. 

“James, can you pack everything up so we’re ready to leave? I’ll only take my computer bag with me to see Pied Piper. Alec, pick a restaurant with acceptable sight lines where we can meet her, preferably somewhere with good food.”

“I know a place,” he says. “Dress nice and I’ll make a reservation in the back room. I saved their lives three years ago, they owe me a favor.” Alec scribbles down an address and a name, then steps out to go get changed himself. Q glances down at the tee and jeans he pulled on, realizing he’s going to have to change. 

At least Alec saying ‘dress nice’ means less than James, with his preference for full suits every day, saying ‘dress nice’. His version of ‘dress nice’ means one of the nicest suits Mycroft has given him, and he’ll still feel slightly underdressed.

He finds Pied Piper on one of her favorite boards. Shocker, that one. 

_Ethos: Pied Piper, I have an offer to discuss in private._

_Pied Piper: PM private?_

_Ethos: Public private._

_Pied Piper: Well then. Have one of the others tell me where. It takes me an hour to get to the city, so that’s your time frame._

He logs in on a different window, sending the address with Logos and the time, two and a half hours from now, with Chaos. Pied Piper replies to Ethos.

_Pied Piper: Done and done. I’m bringing my Princess._

_Ethos: I’m bringing a friend, so that’s fine._ She can read between the lines, see ‘friend’ as ‘bodyguard’ because she knows what he does. Vaguely. 

Cait and Danielle drew up a good deal for her, similar to Q’s own but less restrictive. Full amnesty for past transgressions, protection within MI6 from anyone who might object to her new position, and rank within MI6 as appropriate to her skills. In return, they ask for loyalty and her abilities and a contractual obligation not to go work for any other intelligence agency within 5 years if she leaves MI6. Fairly standard deal for a hacker being brought in to MI6. Q’s is just more restrictive because he didn’t come willingly to MI6, among other things. 

Perhaps he should have Mycroft reinstate his existence. There’s nothing in his MI6 contract forbidding it. It was always Mycroft standing in the way of that. Now that Sherlock, Mummy, and Father know he is still alive, there’s no reason to be a non-entity. 

_Pied Piper: See you soon, Ethos._

_Ethos: In a while, Pied Piper._

“James, do you have breakfast done?” 

“On the table.”

“Good.” Q heads downstairs, laptop on his hip as he messages Cait about preparations in Detroit. They’re going to need new wardrobes, a car waiting somewhere on the route with all the stuff people need in snow- scrapers, blankets, what does he really know? When it snows, he lives in his office, same as he does any other time it’s inconvenient to go home. Not that they ever get too much snow, but enough to say ‘oh look, it snowed’. 

Hopefully, James and Alec know how to drive in snow and ice and all that stuff, because he doesn’t. If not, he hopes they admit it rather than playing ‘we’re big tough secret agents and a little ice can’t beat us’. Q’s pretty sure you aren’t supposed to whip the wheel around in their usual style of driving, no matter if they’re followed or not, especially on the ice. 

He picks at his breakfast, nibbling on just enough to tide him over to his meeting with Pied Piper. 

“Why is this Pied Piper so important now if you know our next destination? And speaking of, where is it? You haven’t said.”

“Oh, haven’t I? Detroit. Hopefully, they’re not making a break for the border. I’d hate to have to get yet another country involved in this.”

“And Pied Piper?” James slides another piece of meat on his plate, as if Q wouldn’t notice the addition. They may be the spies, but he’s the one who has to notice all the little details and make everything absolutely perfect to keep them alive. It would take more than a little sleight of hand to get past him. He eats it anyways, but he has to defend in his own mind that he did actually notice. 

“She’s a rarity. She’s older than me and has been hacking on a similar level to me for the last twenty years. I learned a lot of my initial tricks from Pied Piper. What makes her unique, though, it that she’s still independent. Most of us either get arrested, taken in by organizations like MI6 to be useful, or work on the other side for criminal organizations.” Q finishes his breakfast with one hand, slowly typing out a response to Danielle on a point of resource management in the Branch with the other. Some of the senior techs are trying to push their personal projects forwards while he isn’t in the Branch to shoot them down, as if the annoying budgeting part of management hasn’t been Danielle all along. She’s good at that, and was perfectly happy to let him lead R&D while she did most of the day-to-day management, same as she did for so many years with Boothroyd. 

“I’m going to go pick out clothes for you,” James says after the silence grows long between them, punctuated by the click of keys and the occasional click of his tongue as Q thinks. Mycroft hated that habit of his as a child, which only made Sherlock encourage him to keep it. Good thing he’s behind the scenes, not out in the field. It would be an awful tell in the field. 

It also drives several of the Double-0s crazy when he’s working on something while on comms with them. 

“No,” he shouts as James’ words sink in, tipping the chair over as he dashes for the stairs.

By the time he gets upstairs, James has secured his closet doors shut with quite a bit of rope, a few thin chains, and what looks like tightly looped wire. He’s leaning against it with a smirk that would look more at home on Alec’s face than James’. 

“You’re wearing this.”

One outfit is laid out on the bed. Surprisingly, it’s not stuffy and formal. One of his nicer shirts, a pale grey one that he picked for being soft and comfortable, paired with black and grey checked trousers and a violet cardigan that Danielle made for him. For his shoes, James set out his basic black hi-tops. 

“That’s… surprisingly doable.”

James gives him a quick, fierce kiss and leaves him to change on his own, warning Alec to come eat now or go without. 

This may just be the first time since MI6 took him that his life feels entirely his own and mostly… kind of… well, more in control than usual. Which is saying something, given that his one estranged brother is officially but not actually dead and being tracked down by a copycat terrorist who already managed to bomb the CIA. 

But normal, normal would be boring. 

And he can’t have that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hang with me, guys, I just needed a filler chapter to get things set up to move on. Sorry!


	24. The White Queen's Move

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a little Mycroft.

 

Does it hurt more to have hope and lose it than to never have hope at all?

Mycroft wouldn’t know. He lives in the present, calculating a thousand possible futures and manipulating his present to work towards his preferred future. He doesn’t do _believing_ something will happen, just plans on every single decision to attempt what he’d like the world to look like. He’s good at what he does, but so is the other side.

Until he answers that question for himself, he won’t tell John Watson about Sherlock’s continued survival.

Moving on. No sense wasting time on a decision he already made.

To someone who doesn’t know chess, the board on the corner of his desk looks like a half-played game. To someone who does, it is either a game played by very poor players or a decoration. Mycroft lifts the white queen, tilting the crystal piece from side to side and watching light refract across his office, setting her down off to the side of the board with several other pieces out of play. 

Irene Adler. One of his successes, much as he’d like her permanently out of the way. She’s contained, of no use to the White Grandmasters, but their positions are for life. Until her death, they can’t replace her with a new Queen. He was quite wroth with Sherlock for saving her life, but it has worked out for the best and his spy he had in their side, the man who would have been promoted to Queen in her stead, was promoted to Bishop instead. That’s acceptable. 

He taps his fingers against the white king. He’s been inactive for a surprisingly long time, which is worrying, and his spy hasn’t heard anything or spoken to anybody who has seen the man in the same length of time. He’s certain the White King is still alive, because they are required to make official announcements when a Grandmaster has died and their replacement elected, but that shouldn’t be possible.

He depresses the button on his phone, holding it for a full five seconds longer than he normally would before allowing it to connect to Anthea’s desk outside his office door.

“Anthea, I am not to be disturbed until further notice.”

“Understood.” 

He opens the interrogation footage on his secure computer, putting in earbuds just on the off chance that they managed to bug his office in the last three hours since he checked. 

Irene Adler is still shattered at this point, her intellect taken down by Sherlock and necessary measures taken until she gave them some answers. Her nice clothes have been replaced with prison scrubs, her hair falling out of its style, and she looks haunted in a way that says she’ll tell them anything now.

They ask her several questions they know the answers to, questions about the contents of her phone and about things they’ve found out about that the White Grandmasters were working on. When she starts answering truthfully, they ask her the questions they really care about.

“Who are the White Rooks?”

“I don’t know their names. They are both snipers, I know that, but I never saw them, just the dots of their scopes.”

“Who are the White Knights?”

“A man and a woman, but they stay out of the country for the most part. I don’t know names, we rarely do names.”

“Who are the White Bishops?”

“I know one, a Ernest King, he’s a lawyer. I don’t know the other.”

“Who is the White King?”

Irene sucks in a deep breath. “I can’t tell you, he’ll kill me.”

“Who is the White King?”

“I can’t tell you!”

The video skips to people, hands gloved and faces out of frame, handcuffing her to her chair again. 

“Who is the White King.”

Irene’s voice is barely a whisper. “James Moriarty.”

He promised Algernon that if he found out the identities of the White Rook and the White King, he’d tell him and help Algernon take his revenge for what they did. 

He’s going to have to break that promise. He already lost one brother to obsession with James Moriarty. 

This time, he’s doing it on his own.

“Anthea?”

“Yes?”

“We’re going hunting, dear.”

“The White King?”

“Asking questions you know the answer to?”

She sighs in delight. “This is how I know you love me, Myc.” 

“Oh, and assign one of the Knights to watch over John Watson. If we go after the White King, he might go after Watson again.”

“Black Knight Mary Morstan is certified as a nurse. Shall I set her up working in the same clinic as Watson with instructions to befriend him and watch over him?”

Mycroft hasn’t dealt directly with Morstan in years, but he trusts Anthea’s judgement implicitly. “Do. I leave the details to you.”

“Yes, Mr. Holmes.”


	25. Are We There Yet? or the Impatience of Traveling Without WiFi

 

“Are we there yet?”

“New Orleans to a safehouse in Flint, Michigan. It’s a sixteen hour drive, without stopping, and we can’t fly unless absolutely necessary. You know all of this, Q.” James is endlessly patient, eyes on the road ahead as he whips along the highway at speeds far from legal. The CIA, grateful for their assistance and swift movement with regards to their leads on the copycat terrorist, put out an order not to pull them over.

“Where are we, at least?”

“Kentucky or Tennessee. Don’t wake Alec up, Q, I’m enjoying the silence.”

Q glances back at the backseat, confirming for himself that Alec is out cold and snoring gently. He whined about being banished to the backseat once he finished his turn driving, but Q had spent _hours_ back there by that point and wanted a real seat for once. And a cup holder that he didn’t have to lean forwards to reach. And more to see, forgetting that it’s dark now and they’re apparently far enough from anything right now that there isn’t even light pollution for him to see by. And not a chance of service for him to argue with Cait or Danielle or even just see what Logos can find about possible reasons their terrorist is headed to Detroit. 

He doesn’t manage silence for long.

“Can I drive?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve been trained in defensive driving maneuvers and escape driving, so have the skills if someone does come after us. Because this spot in the car is intended to be able to see all of the surroundings, which makes it the best for maintaining your safety. Because I’m here as one of your bodyguards, Q, which means I’m going to do everything to keep you safe, even if it displeases you, where if I was just here as your lover I would be more willing to let you have your way so long as it doesn’t compromise your safety.” James finally runs out of steam, flicking his gaze to Q for a moment before returning to the road. The speed ticks slowly upwards, then back down when James notices. 

_Not comfortable with heartfelt declarations_. Q isn’t surprised, not really. He’s read James’ file. Every time James has taken something for his own, he is either betrayed or it is otherwise taken from him. No wonder his files read like they do, full of bedding enemy spies with knives at each others’ throats and stolen kisses before gunfights. He gives James space, as much as he can without actually drawing away, returning to an essay on the development of social skills in gifted youths in situations in which they are surrounded by other gifted youths versus those who are surrounded by ordinary youths. 

The authors would love to get their hands on Sherlock, especially. Mycroft adapts. It is almost his greatest talent, after manipulation and terrorizing unsuspecting acquaintances of his brothers’. Q is in espionage. He’s no field agent like James and Alec, but he knows when to let his skills free and when to hide under the facades of normalcy. Sherlock… well, Sherlock went through five psychiatrists in their youth, four of whom retired and one of whom checked himself into a mental hospital. Sherlock played a different mental illness for each one of their sessions, each as convincingly as the last and always with just barely not enough data for him to diagnose. 

He doesn’t remember drifting off, but wakes when someone reaches in and lifts him from his seat. He flails, agitated, until James shushes him. 

“Alec is driving and you’ll be more comfortable in the back. Go back to sleep, Q.”

James and Alec discuss quietly over his head, switching languages smoothly until the cadence of James’ French and Alec’s Italian lulls him to sleep. 

He wakes perhaps an hour later, by the non-light in the sky, lying across the backseat with his legs hanging off the side and his hips gradually sliding that way. James is seated sideways, leaning against the door where he can see Alec and Q both, smoothing Q’s hair back from his eyes in a fruitless cycle. He brushes Q’s hair back, and the moment he releases it some returns to his face and other hair that had been behaving before joins it. 

He gives himself away by pressing into the touch, shifting James’ hand to drag his nails along Q’s scalp. James chuckles deep in his chest, using his nails again, skimming down further along his throat with the pads of his fingers before coming to a rest with the tips of two fingers resting in the hollow of Q’s throat. 

“No fair, Bond,” Alec complains, rearview mirror tilted to watch. 

“You slept through your turn, Trevelyan.”

“So much for sharing.”

“Sharing means we both get to have him. It doesn’t mean we always have to do so together.” James tilts Q’s head to the side, tracing the artery with his tongue and pressing his teeth against it, just a ghost of pressure, a reminder that James knows a thousand ways to kill him right here, right now. Q shivers and he withdraws his teeth, kissing away the barest indentations left on Q’s skin. “Not unless Q wants it that way, but he seems perfectly happy like this right now.”

Really, Q would like a little more than this phantom pressure, but he knows his agents-turned-lovers well enough to know that James is toying with him right now and pushing for more will only make his touches lighter and less frequent. He would have liked to play a little more this morning- Yesterday morning. Whenever that was.- but he had his meeting with Pied Piper to set up and attend and then they hit the road and _why aren’t they there yet?_

Agreeing to drive all this way was a terrible idea. He didn’t realize quite how long of a drive it would be and neither Alec nor James wants to stop for the night because it would mean letting Q stay at a hotel that hasn’t been vetted by MI6 and them personally.  

And then James drags his hand back up, cupping it around Q’s throat and tipping his head back to look up at the agent above him, possessive heat in his eyes. All thoughts go out of his head and his lips part, waiting. When James doesn’t kiss him, he tries to close the distance himself, but James’ hold is firm. Just like he predicted- _and neglected_ , that annoying part of his mind reminds him- his other hand lightens his touch even that much further without releasing his hold on Q, roaming but never giving enough pressure to count. 

When James finally presses his palm flat against Q’s cock, it rips a throaty moan from him, trailing off into a needy whine as James doesn't move or do anything else, just rests there. 

“Damn it, James!” Alec pulls over to the side of the road, twisting around in his seat. “Public indecency. We can’t afford the delay of being arrested now and I’d appreciate it if you let me _drive_.”

“Q, should I stop?”

“No!”

“There you go, Alec. Eyes forwards and stay in your lane.” James’ hand slides upwards, underneath Q’s shirt to splay across his ribs, his other hand finally releasing Q to unbutton his trousers and pull the zipper tooth by agonizing tooth. Every time Q so much as shudders, moving involuntarily into James’ hand, he stops everything, staying perfectly still and silent so the only sounds are the whistle of wind through the roof rack, Q’s labored breaths, and what sounds like Alec counting backwards from one hundred in Russian. 

James tugs his trousers and pants down just far enough, grabbing Q’s arse to shift his back against James’ chest and rub the hard line of his own cock, still hidden by his jeans, against Q. Alec swears, tilts the rearview mirror up to the ceiling, and steps on the accelerator. 

“James,” he asks in a broken whisper, “please.”

James takes him in hand then, bringing him to the brink embarrassingly quickly and retreating to perfectly non-sexual areas, doing it again and again until even Alec hisses with sexual frustration and the touch of James’ fingers to his elbow, the outside of his ankle, the ridge of his cheekbone makes him writhe for the next touch, hoping ever hoping that it will be the one to bring him over the edge. 

The next touch, the next murmur of sweet nothings that are sappy and yet sound terribly dirty and run a thrill down his spine, the hardness answering his own pressed against him, _oh please, need to come, please James_ please!

He doesn’t remember starting to beg, but there they are on the side of the road again, and it’s cold air and a slammed door and Alec is on top of him, one foot planted on the floor and the other knee wedged against the seat as he tries to fit his bulk into the already crowded backseat. Q moans, deprived of James’ teasing hands, and Alec tries to crowd closer in, bumping foreheads and catching one of Q’s elbows in his ribs. 

James shifts Q down just enough that he and Alec can kiss messily, more teeth and tongue than press of lips, catching him between the hard planes of their chests, muscle layered on top of scar on top of muscle, with bone and the fragile organs in there somewhere. He wriggles, seeking sensation while they work each other up, and one- both?- of them groan in response. 

Q remembers that he has hands, and the button on Alec’s jeans is _right there_ , and he’s scrabbling and Alec is swearing and James is fumbling at his own clothes and somehow, they all end up more or less naked in a sweaty tangle of awkward limbs with socks on and James’ jeans not entirely off one leg and Alec’s shirt still half-tangled around his neck and the shoulder pressed against the upholstery and isn’t that a long word for him to still be this coherent. 

“Please tell me you can reach something,” James asks Alec, who stretches an arm into the front seat, almost pitching them off the backseat and to the floor, snagging a bottle of something and dangling it in front of Q.

“Yes?”

“Yes, _please._ ”

James takes it from Alec, slicking a few fingers and touching him just barely, a caress that leaves him wanting and unsatisfied while Alec half-sits back on his heels, watching. 

“Mmm, now James, he’s ready,” Alec comments, drawing nonsense spirals on the insides of Q’s thighs. 

“Do you want me to give you more, Q? It’s still full dark here. We could take you right here, in the back of this car, and nobody would see.”

“Logistical impossibility,” Q gasps, pushing back against James’ hand all the same. James obliges him, pressing a single finger inside, the pressure strange and wrong and good, so good. “Not enough room, not for the three of us and it would be rather uncomfortable even with two of us, and if you would just let me come I would even forgive you and wait until later with a bed, preferably, and neatly tucked sheets that you can yank at angrily when they get in the way and maybe even a shower and definitely sheets that are soft and not rough car seats.”

“Talk too much, moan too little,” Alec murmurs against his lips as he leans in and takes them, the gentler kisses they’ve been bestowing on him turning more quickly to the harsh passion James and Alec share with each other. 

“Like you’re one to talk,” Q pulls to the side to say, “I’ve been on the other end of your comms.” James adds a second finger alongside the first and Q’s words trail off into a drawn-out moan of mingled pain-pleasure, twisting up against each other along his overwrought nerves. Alec kisses like a man dying of thirst, guiding Q’s hand to his own erection and letting him tease, asking him to tease, pulling his hand away on any occasion in which he tries to firm up his grip and make Alec come. 

James finds his prostate, Q’s back arching off James’ chest and driving him up into Alec’s arms, and Alec presses his body downwards, stomach against Q’s cock, and it’s too much all at once and never enough and he’s coming, coming, and the world is bright light and velvet dark and the stars are outside and inside and he is everything nothing and then he’s back in his body, panting and slick with more than his own release. 

“If I’m going to by sticky until we stop somewhere with a shower, one of you can sit back here in the wet patch while the other drives.”

The corner of Alec’s mouth twitches, and he tries so hard to suppress it before he throws his head back and laughs, banging against the window frame as James and Q join him, slowly reaching for their discarded clothes as the occasional taillights fly by in dual streaks of red.


	26. Look For What Isn't There

 

 For all their talk of getting a bed and Q having his wicked way with them- well, that was his plan, they seemed to think it would be the other way around and he didn’t argue for the sake of keeping the element of surprise- their arrival at their safe house in one of the outskirt communities of Flint, Michigan was punctuated by a bustle of setting equipment up, sweeping the grounds, placing cameras to cover blindspots, and all the rest of that stuff that neither James nor Alec trusted anyone else with. They barely tolerate MI6 support teams setting up for them when they’re on missions and refuse to let anyone else work on security systems now while they’re in charge of Q’s safety. 

Which he would appreciate more if they were actually in Detroit, where their terrorist and followers are going to be gathering, but they’re an hour out of the city because James and Alec don’t want to be near a terrorist who is good enough to be threatening Sherlock, no matter what Q tells them about how Sherlock would walk straight in to danger because it might be fun.

They don’t believe he’s above all that.

Rude.

He starts setting up another online identity, keeping this one completely separate from the others, just a presence lurking on various forums. This one is kept separate from his other screen names, letting others start telling him the legend of Moncrieff and the theories about his mystery disappearance and about who the power players are currently. 

Apparently, the prevailing theory right now is that the KGB took Moncrieff and killed him. He’s done a better job than he thought in keeping the memory of Moncrieff alive with Ethos and Logos. Pied Piper is still seen as a source of knowledge, Chaos a force to be feared, and everyone is generally fond of Ethos and Logos. 

If anybody links Nostos to his other screen names because of the language, they don’t mention it. Lots of people have screen names that mean something to them but are supposed to seem innocuous, so are often translated. 

Nostos, _homecoming_ or _return_. Mycroft would understand what he wants. Almost all of MI6, all of those in Q-Branch who knew him growing up and all of the Double-0s who are so possessive of him as their Quartermaster, would argue that he is already home. 

Home. It’s now his desk in the Hub in Q-Branch, with Cait and Danielle delivering food to him and Eve stopping by to offer tidbits from agent debriefings that she thinks might make him laugh. It’s their flat, playing video games late at night and sprinting to the kitchen to avoid Alec’s cooking and waiting up late to make sure for himself that one of them isn’t injured when returning from a mission. He’d just like to have it and Christmas dinners with Mummy and Father, openly visiting Mycroft and not Anthea, and perhaps even take-out Chinese with Sherlock occasionally. 

He’s 34 now and has spent fifteen years as a non-entity in MI6. He’s proved himself a loyal asset to Queen and Country hundreds of times over. He’s was never actually a threat, just a threat of a threat neutralized before he could do anything, and now he’s one of the most important people in MI6. If M or any of the other heads of MI6 were broken, they would only have information and whatever physical skills they maintain. If Q were broken, he would be able to devastate MI6 and all her allies easily. 

If they trust him with all that, they ought to trust him with his own name again.

But that’s a matter for later, for once the copycat terrorist is dealt with and Sherlock is safely ensconced in whatever facility Mycroft will use to make sure he’s healthy and clean. 

_Andy: An, any news?_

He continues working on Nostos while waiting for Anthea to respond to him. Anybody on the outside wouldn’t find this odd. Ever since Sherlock’s suicide, he’s spoken to Anthea, supposedly to check on how Mycroft is doing, almost weekly. 

_Anthea: Rough week, this one. It’s the anniversary of something or the other, so he keeps expecting to hear from his brother, but nothing. Never really got time to grieve, not with it being so public._

No sign of Sherlock, not with all of Mycroft’s resources, which is bad. Sherlock can’t stand not being brilliant, which leaves clear clues to anyone who knows where to look. Something’s not right. 

He contacts the CIA to get permission to access criminal records in the area, searching for anything unusual. There has to be something. There’s always something. Q settles in with a cup of tea. He does this all the time to find that one piece that’s missing before they can send agents in, but this time it’s different. Their terrorist is clever and it’s personal.

Don’t look for what’s there, look for what isn’t.

 

***

 

“I found something.”

Alec rocks his chair back on to two legs, ankles locked around the leg of the kitchen island, and gives Q an upside-down look. “Go on, then. I’m on patrol in just a few minutes, so if you can avoid that, I’d really appreciate it. Trying to patrol subtly is hard enough in residential areas without two feet of snow on the ground.”

“It’s all about what isn’t there. In the last two years, there have been more clever crimes and less random crime as well as an increase in crimes outside of the specific neighborhoods in which they would usually occur, with the exception of three places that saw an increase in all crime and one that saw a decrease.”

Alec drops his chair back to the floor, standing in the same motion to pace around the kitchen island. “What does that mean?”

“I’ve seen this pattern before. In London, on a side project I was working on.” Q rushes an email to Cait and Danielle, as the only people who have access to his personal section of the Q-Branch server while he’s away, to compare his results. If he gets confirmation, they have a bigger problem than anyone thought.

“What? Q, I thought we talked about leaving us hanging while we’re on mission. This counts. Don’t get lost in your own head.”

“James Moriarty. This is the same pattern he left across London.”

Alec stills abruptly. He heard enough about Moriarty while Q was originally researching him to know that if Moriarty is back, their terrorist is just a pawn in a bigger game. 

“Are you certain?”

“It’s amateur, if I can find it this easily, but that means our copycat terrorist has bigger ambitions. It does mean that I know where to look. Three centers of activity, where business is run out of, and one which is probably full of crime lords yet considered safe land because it is the center of the web. And…” Q looks away, glad that it’s reckless Alec here instead of equally reckless yet also with a sense of responsibility James, “ImaywanttostagearaidtherecauseIthinkSherlock’sthere.”

“Q.”

“I may or may not want to stage a raid there because I think they’ve got Sherlock and I think they’re holding him there.”

“You can send one of us, and that’s only with a plan.” Q turns to see James propping up the doorway with a frown. “One of us stays here to defend you, and that’s final.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“No.”

“Then send me somewhere where I won’t be noticed- a college campus or something, I look young enough if I dress right to pass for a student- where I can guide you from outside. A study room would be soundproofed, so I could help and nobody would overhear me.”

“Too risky.”

Alec shrugs and leaves the room. So much for outnumbering James as a strategy.

“I won’t risk my brother’s life.”

“And I won’t risk yours.”

Q rolls his eyes and pulls his satellite phone out of his bag. Eve picks up on the third ring.

“Please tell me my Quartermaster is still alive. The rest of you are expendable. Also, if this isn’t an emergency and you forgot about the time change, I will find you and I will kill you.” Eve punctuates the end of her sentence with a yawn. 

“Unless I’m a zombie, I can confirm that I’m still alive. Will you tell Bond that I can be left in a quiet place alone to send both of them in to a target?”

“Hand the phone over to him.”

Q hands James the phone, returning to his computer to cross-reference what Pied Piper has been researching for him about Moriarty with what he found up here. Now that she’s signed the contract, he can use her, even before she and her daughter make the move to London. James doesn’t say much, just makes affirmative noises while he listens to what must be an epic lecture, at this length.

“I’ll pass that on to Q. Yes, Moneypenny, those exact words. Goodbye.” James hangs up, putting the sat phone back in Q’s bag and taking Alec’s abandoned chair. Q hides a smile behind his screen. Quite a lecture indeed, if James isn’t telling him to stop sitting on the counter. That’s one of the Rules in their flat. 

“So? When do I find a satisfactory library with wifi?”

“When Eve gets here.”

“Oh, shit!” Alec swears, “are you serious?”

James gives Q the look of _oh-lord-what-have-you-done._ “Deadly serious.”


	27. Three Words, 007.

 

Having a reputation for retreating to his space to tinker with things when he’s upset is a very, very good thing.

Q stalks to the room where he spread out all his computer equipment and various electronic bits and bobs because he can’t bear to leave all of his projects at home when he travels, collecting various pieces on his way to tinker with. He also kidnaps James and Alec’s equipment, setting it so that whenever they say something patronizing, it will play a clip of a different annoying song over their end of the comms only. The transmitter for it is hidden within their body armor, circumventing his own system to detect transmissions not on the official MI6 channels that prevents tracking bugs from being planted on them. Simple enough, not enough of a distraction to get them killed, but keeping it unnoticeable by anyone in the Branch except maybe Aaron, Keith, and Malia who develop the body armor for all agents. 

And then he sneaks their equipment back into their bags under the guise of haughtily fetching his own tea and refusing to eat the dinner James left under cling wrap for him in favor of chocolate biscuits. 

And he waits. The best revenge is the unexpected vengeance.

When Sherlock doesn't get his way, he sulks for days or throws truly epic strops. He was always that was as a child, and from the looks of Watson’s blog, things haven’t changed much. If at all. Mycroft, on the other hand, has often recruited Q’s help in letting people find themselves in a quiet place with lights that flicker in a faintly ominous way and not so faintly ominous threats. 

Eventually, James sends Alec to the store to get the list of things Eve requires before she will tolerate their combined presences. Q moves to the sitting room, moving one chair to the center and everything else to the edges of the room, perching there with something intentionally obnoxious on the TV and his headphones in.

It takes James twenty minutes to get annoyed and come looking.

“Grow up, Q,” he snaps. “We’re putting your safety ahead of your happiness. That’s our jobs.”

Q mutes the TV, but continues ignoring James, not giving him the satisfaction of a response. 

“Slow down there on the we,” Alec says over their comms. He and James are terrible about keeping their equipment intact normally, but they’re insisting on using it for even the smallest of reasons now. Overprotective idiots. “I’m not agreeing with you James, I just know better than to argue because you’d have surprisingly few qualms about murdering me to make a point.”

Mm. Q almost feels bad about messing with Alec’s equipment, too.

Not.

“You’re supposed to keep me safe within the line of my duties, not to prevent me from doing them.”

“I’ve lost people doing just that before.”

“I’m not Vesper fucking Lynd,” Q hisses. “She betrayed you and she betrayed MI6 and she died for it. So what that you were sleeping with her? How many times have you slept with someone who either betrayed MI6 or would if they had a chance, men and women who died for their treachery, for terrorism, because they got involved with the wrong people and tried to use you? How many have you killed with your own hands, just hours after you spent your seed inside them?” 

“Q,” James starts, tight and controlled.

Q surges to his feet, crossing the few steps to get right in James’ personal space, using every last inch of his height. “You don’t even know, do you? How many people you’ve fucked in the twilight hours only to kill at the light of dawn? Does it count when you leave them to certain death, too cowardly to pull the trigger yourself?”

“Q, that’s enough,” James snarls, taking the last half step to close the gap between them. Intimidation. Q was winding down, but that sparks his temper all over again.

“I am not some delicate flower, a china doll that will break if you so much as look at me wrong. I have been an agent of MI6 longer than you have, and yet I’m still alive. I have been tortured not for information, but for the sheer sadistic pleasure of it. I had more blood on my hands than most serial killers by the time I was twenty-two and even I’ve lost count of how much by now. Three words, 007. Back. The fuck. Off.”

James spins on one heel, makes enough noise leaving for a child to track his progress through the house, and slams of the front door. The silence is deafening as Q quivers with leftover rage, forcing himself to take long, easy breaths and not add more serious alterations on top of his merely annoying ones from earlier. 

“Q?” Alec asks.

He doesn’t respond.

“You do know that was four words, right?”

Q collapses back into his chair, blindly changing the channel to the Food Network and leaving it muted. “I haven’t lost my temper like that in years.”

“It was a little extreme.”

“Understatement of the year.” That’s the worst part about his temper, that he doesn’t stay mad. He gets it all out, goes for the kill, and then he can’t summon up the energy to be upset any longer. Just tired.

“Do you need me to hold him down so you can apologize?”

“I’m not going to apologize, Alec. I apologize, and we’re right back to James thinking that he can go too far because I’ll just blow up and then act like it was all my fault. It’s his move, now.” 

Alec sighs. “I’ll be back soon. Please don’t kill each other before I get back.”

Q doesn’t merit that with a reply, returning to work on Nostos with all the appropriate awe as people tell him stories of Moncrieff, some vastly underestimating what he could do at that age and others attributing urban legends to him. He’ll give Eve twenty four hours from the time of The Call to talk some sense into James and Alec. And if they’re still refusing to do anything, he’ll go in alone. 

He isn’t nearly as dangerous in hand-to-hand combat as any of the three of them, but he has one advantage over James and Alec, at least. He doesn’t look dangerous in the slightest. 

Mycroft would remind him that Sherlock is the stupidly reckless one, so to show a little restraint as befitting one of their intelligence. 

Q doesn’t care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Q's temper is based off my own, so if it doesn't make sense that way, I'll try to rewrite it to make a little more sense.


	28. I Say 'Subtle', But I Mean The Other Thing

 

For a task that relies on being subtle, being just another face in a crowd, Eve is making them remarkably notable. Q dressed down to faded jeans, his hi-tops, and a hooded sweatshirt from the university store under his parka. With his glasses and his hair becoming sentient after wearing a hat all morning, he looks like a student because that’s what everyone expects to see from him. 

Eve, on the other hand, is in a black sheath dress with red pumps despite the snow and ice outside, cable-knit tights her only concession to the weather. Her long coat is lined in flannel instead of her preferred silk, but the pattern matches her shoes and her handbag that Q knows is full of weapons and a cute wallet. Oh, and a makeup bag, because _even I can’t achieve all of this without a little bit of cosmetic help, Q, don’t be a fool_. 

Basically, he’s hiding behind her in their corner booth in the cafe while she lounges and flirts and gets people to buy her far more free lattes than can be good for anyone, even though half of them end up in front of him after she takes a few sips, thanks the person who was charmed by her and bought it, and then manages to dismiss them before they notice anything. 

Q supposes it makes him even more invisible so long as nobody stays long enough to notice that Eve is actually with someone, not charming the cafe alone. At least if someone gets jealous, Eve will either bat her eyes and get the rest of the cafe to make them leave her alone or kick their ass herself before they even get a chance to disturb him.

He is having to use a specialized microphone against his throat to pick up the quietest of words from him and still tune out outside noise, but with a big headset and a little luck, anybody will assume he’s playing games, not maneuvering secret agents into a unusually safe neighborhood of Detroit to search for someone who may or may not be there at all. 

“Setting up your device, Q,” Alec announces over comms.

“Update, Bond?”

“Surveilling.” Bond- he’s definitely Bond right now, far too impersonal for Q to use his first name, hasn’t behaved like this since Skyfall when Q was a stranger. As best he can figure, Bond is only answering at all because he does need to keep Alec appraised as to his work as well. If this was a solo mission, Bond would mysteriously lose his earpiece. 

Q reaches for his cup, managing not to spit it back when he gets peppermint mocha instead of the caramel-crunch latte that he was in the middle of drinking. There’s about two bites of a croissant in front of him and… it isn’t very good. The poor sod who bought it for Eve must have been cute for her to eat this much of it. He sets it on the other side of his laptop where a harried employee keeps coming to collect his rejects and the things Eve takes away because it amuses her to make him drink everything she’s drinking. 

On the bright side, nobody here can poison him without Eve noticing.

Except Eve.

Although, arguably, if she poisons him she wouldn’t need to notice it because she would know it occurred without any outward signs, so it doesn’t count. 

So yes, nobody here can poison him without Eve noticing, apart from Eve herself. And Alec would avenge him, and Bond would probably get over Q’s words long enough to help. And then M would murder the two of them for letting Q die on their watch, if Mycroft didn’t get to them first.

Not that he’s put any thought in to this. 

“Ok, we’re online,” he tells… Alec. “Searching for… there we go. I can create a blip in their system, interrupt the signals for thirty seconds without notice. Tell me when you’re ready.”

“Ready,” Bond says, over the sounds of crunching bone and a hand slapping at a wall. 

“Ditto,” Alec tells him.

“Closing the system down in fifteen.” He lets them count silently while he types, the system unravelling before him. They have some computer expertise, or he would have been able to break them from Q-Branch, but no clever tricks to foil him like Silva left. And with very few exceptions, mostly on closed systems in specific cases, he is the best. After all, he’s lived and breathed this for most of his life. 

“Five, four, three, two, clear.”

“006 in the compound, door secure.”

There’s a short scuffle over the other line, ending in a silenced gunshot. “007 in the clear. Body hidden in a broom closet, won’t be undiscovered for long.”

“006, sweep the third floor, 007, the second. Target won’t be on the first.”

Neither agent replies, but Q returns to the device Alec set up for him and starts searching for the security cameras. He has them offline, at the moment. They take longer to restart than the door locks, so he has another ten minutes before they realize anything is wrong. With all likelihood, someone in the compound will spot one of them and raise the alarm before they notice the cameras aren’t coming back online.

Just in case, he starts fabricating a loading screen to feed to the monitors. Have faith in their discretion and all that stuff they’re supposed to do but never do because the Double-0s are Double-0s because they like making a scene. 

On cue, something explodes and Q tips his head back into the corner, banging it against the wall. Eve takes one glance and requests that her current toy- a tall blonde man with a scar and sapphire blue eyes with the familiar coldness that makes him completely Eve’s type, she likes the _dangerous-and-I-know-it_ type- get her an Irish cream steamer and a double shot of espresso for her friend. He gives her the sultry not-smile and blech, he really doesn’t need to watch Eve seriously flirt with someone, not after he was manning the comms when she seduced Bond. He may destroy equipment for the sake of privacy, but _she_ doesn’t. 

It should be weird, sort of sharing a lover with Eve, but she’s Eve and that makes everything different. 

“Locked door at the end of the third floor. Picking it. Q, can you watch the cameras for patrols?”

“One patrol on the first floor, three men. A single woman on the second floor, on the opposite side from you Bond, but be aware. I have a camera on the target, but they aren’t labelled well. Asleep. One coming from your left, 006.” Eve’s toy returns, handing her a drink. She takes a sip of his espresso, says something about needing to remember this place for her next hangover, and passes it over and scoots a little closer to her new toy. 

_R: Why did Moneypenny vanish in the middle of the night leaving only a note?_

_Q: Because Bond is an overprotective idiot and I ought to mention that Eve has terrible taste in men._

_Danielle: The same could be said of you._

_R: Honey, please tell us that you watched your tongue._

Q ignores them, watching his video feeds and giving feedback to Bond on the position of the woman, now texting as she heads downstairs. 

_Danielle: Oh, dear. You need to come home so we can sit you down with fresh cookies and a big glass of milk and give you the Talk._

Q groans. Mummy didn’t believe in The Talk, but Mycroft gave it to Sherlock at sixteen- who immediately shared it with Q- and then gave him The Talk three years later when he turned sixteen. Boothroyd and M sat him down the first time he had an actual date, after which M sent 001 to stalk him and Boothroyd sent Danielle and 003 to do the same. 

“Bad news?”

“Not about the mission. Success with the door?”

“Almost. There it is. Good, I need to hide the body. Only computers, Q. You want?”

“As much as you can carry in your bag, and if you can’t take it all, take the hard drives.”

“Understood.”

“Bond, status?”

“With that woman gone, I’m heading to the doors she was loitering by. So far, all rooms are clear.” On the screen, he saunters by as if he isn’t sitting in a hostile compound hoping to do hostage rescue, but then again, that’s the Double-0s. They have a Retrieval team that usually does this for a reason. 

Eve kicks him with her heel, making some sort of excuse about online gaming being a terrible weakness of his, but he does take it far too seriously, and you can’t choose the friends your parents force on you when you’re just kids, right? He kicks back because it was her idea to come to a cafe where she could amuse herself rather than a nice study room in a library or something. 

_Q: Please remember that I’m 34 and haven’t been a child for a long time._

_R: I bandaged your knee when you tripped on the stairs just last month._

_Danielle: And that we make you lunch because you won’t eat otherwise._

_R: Until you behave like an adult, we will continue to treat you like a child._

“What a frown. Losing your game?”

Q’s head snaps up at Eve’s toy’s mocking tone, but Eve is already chasing him away with harsh words and the Crossed Arms of Doom and Bond is picking the lock on a room and Alec is hiding a body. They need him to be their Quartermaster, which means he has to put the feeling of wrongness behind him. Eve is here, Even chased him off.

On the screen, Sherlock slumbers on as the door opens and Bond steps into the room. Alarm bells go off in Q’s head. That’s not very much like Sherlock at all. Bond crosses, doing a quick vitals check and holding up a note from the table.

“006, clear me a path by whatever means necessary.”

“Give me two minutes.”

“Make it one.”

Q loops footage to hide their movements on the second and third floors, letting the cameras sort of come back online, and sends footage of Alec dragging a body onto the first floor camera in the same place. As a finishing touch, he cuts the transmitter to the patrol on the first floor’s radios so the guard watching the cameras can’t just radio them up. 

Focus on the little things.

They have Sherlock. He’s alive. Whatever the note is, it isn’t immediate enough and therefore he doesn’t need to worry until they’re out of danger. 

Be the Quartermaster.

That’s an easy shift to make. The Quartermaster comes first. He knew that when he took on the job.

“Clearing the back door. From there, it will be a left turn, then an immediate right and another left, which will get you out of sight for the block and a half to the car.” He remote starts it, working on the security system again before finding their computer systems and setting Chaos loose. 

Eve is leaning over his shoulder, watching the end of the operation instead of flirting with the cafe. For once, she doesn’t have a comment, which is a relief because he’s running several directions at once and normally that wouldn’t be a problem but he has those terribly _human_ distractions of Sherlock slumped over Bond’s shoulder and Bond upset with him and this is when he thinks that Mycroft may have been correct that they aren’t meant to feel emotions like others do.

They watch the the agents disappear off the edge of the camera’s view, following the path Q gave them around the edge of a building with Sherlock supported between them. Simple and smooth.

For a job that went off as much as without a hitch as he could have hoped, he doesn’t feel that usual thrill of success, just that little niggling feeling that something isn’t falling in to place, that the sword is still hanging over him. 

“Eve?” he asks as they slide into the car Eve rented, remembering one other thing that isn’t right, that he can’t place, and putting them together. “Did you get the name of that last guy you were flirting with? The one who brought the espresso?”

“I do. Why, going to stalk him on Facebook?”

“Just answer me.” 

“Says he works security for a firm in London. Name of… Moren? Moran? That’s the one. Sebastian Moran.”

_Eyes hands smile knife knife knife._ His shoulder throbs with phantom pain as he places name and face and the skill set he deduced without thinking about it. 

“Q? What’s wrong?”

If he’s showing his face again, knowing Q would be able to recognize him, knowing that he will not forgive and will not forget, he can’t play back into the White Rook’s hands. Q forces his breathing to stay steady and stills his hands.

“Nothing. Funny, I thought I recognized him.”


	29. What Do We Say About Coincidence?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this chapter fought back with a passion. Thanks for the patience!

 

“John would tell you to ‘make up’ with your lover. The angry one, though if you’ve done anything untoward to the other one, I suppose John would want you to deal with him, too.”

Q looks over at Sherlock, sitting curled under a blanket in Q’s best pajamas with what he’s pretty sure is Eve’s dressing gown. He looks frankly ridiculous. His hands are clear of the blanket so he can sip from a bowl of James’ soup, his fourth today. He doesn’t eat all of it, but constantly wants a fresh bowl whenever his bowl starts to cool. Really, they ought to get Sherlock to a hospital. Q’s worried about some sort of hypothermia, but Alec and James are almost constantly patrolling or cooking right now, leaving Eve in charge of keeping him and Sherlock out of trouble. 

“And why would that be?”

“John believes in people.” Sherlock hangs his head, too-long hair hiding his face and nearly dripping into his bowl. As disguises go, it is a clever one. A change of clothes and hair and mannerisms and nobody would put together whoever he was shamming as and Sherlock Holmes. Q can read the unspoken in his action. John believed in him, and then he faked his suicide right in front of John and vanished. 

“It isn’t like you to be so sentimental, Sherlock.”

“How would you know?”

Q hides his wince as best he can, but the gleam in Sherlock’s gaze says he caught it anyways. Sherlock has a point, which is always annoying because he’s second only to Mycroft in crowing about being right, but Q doesn’t know what to say to James. He went too far. That much is clear. He forgets, sometimes, that there is such a thing as confidentiality, spending most of his time with other members of MI6. There are secrets he keeps, but not very many. Everybody has sat down to read mission records on a slow day waiting for an agent to check in at least once or twice. James’ records are more of a romance mixed with explosions, favored by a lot of Q Branch, while Alec’s read like one-half action movie and one-half comedy of errors. Even still, he shouldn’t have brought them up because he was angry. 

Admitting it to himself doesn’t make it any easier to apologize. 

Nor does admitting that he could have done better by Sherlock, despite how much of their situation was out of either of their controls, help him know what to do. Sherlock can’t even seem to decide himself whether he’d rather have Q here, constantly in his sight, or have him disappear and take the painful memories with him. 

Sherlock reaches a hand out, tangling his fingers with the tips of Q’s, deducing his confusion and trying to rectify it without having to say anything. They sit in silence, gazes averted from each other as to avoid deducing the other’s thoughts, for what feels like forever but was probably more like twenty minutes. 

“I’m going to have to tell him. Tell John. All he’s done, all he’s changed in Baker Street, in me, and I’ve never said it out loud. Mycroft told me that he had to tell Anthea, that it was clear to him that she was… more than fond of him and that he reciprocated it, but she couldn’t deduce that about him in return.” Sherlock makes a face as he struggles for words, the smooth flow of his words stilted and caught in his throat. Emotions. They all learned to think with their heads, not with their hearts, and sometimes he wonders if they all took it a little too far. “Tell them. I can see it, Algae, that they’ve changed you. Not because I can compare to what you were before, but because you know it, and that shows here.” 

Sherlock scoots over, shifting his blanket nest with him, and taps Q’s forehead sharply before returning his hand to balance his bowl of soup again. Sherlock doesn’t say anything, but this close Q catches the surprise that crosses his face at his use of his old nickname for Q, followed quickly by his relief that Q doesn’t bring it up or reject it. 

“They make me believe I can exist again,” he whispers. “Be a person, not the Crown’s tool.”

Sherlock doesn’t say anything, just shuffles his bowl onto the table and opens his blanket nest to Q. Feeling somewhat like he’s a child again, he curls up against his brother, letting him rearrange blankets to keep himself warm without pushing Q away. 

When James comes with a fresh bowl of soup, the other one long since having cooled on the table, they’re still curled around each other, Sherlock having decided that Q does a better job of keeping him warm than his bowl of soup. 

“I didn’t peg you for the cuddling type, Holmes.”

“I didn’t peg you for the type who’d be jealous over your lover and his recently-kidnapped and possibly hypothermic brother,” Sherlock mimics. 

James sits down in Q’s abandoned chair and lifts a spoonful of Sherlock’s soup, slurping noisily. Q hides his surprise against Sherlock’s collarbone. James is usually a paragon of good manners, even in the privacy of their flat. 

“Algernon would like to admit that he was wrong and he’s sorry about that, but not about his outburst,” Sherlock tells him, “while I, on the other hand, am perfectly happy to let you both protect him with all the might of the government, scant as that may be. He can’t have a John, but the two of you are the closest he’ll get.”

“Sherlock!”

“Apology accepted, Q.” James sets Sherlock’s soup down next to the other bowl, swapping the spoon from Sherlock’s cold bowl for the one James was using. “Now that you’ve had some quality bonding time, I think I’d like to know why Eve is all in a tizzy about you acting oddly. Something about you, who can’t stop flooding us with information all of the time, refusing to explain.”

“I have no idea what you’re referring to,” Q lies, remembering that Eve not questioning his inquiries about Moran was one of those ‘this went a little too easily’ things that he’s been waiting to come back and bite. He was more worried about Sherlock, because either Sherlock made some serious mistakes to get himself captured by people who would let him be extracted so easily, or they let him go. Alec keeps telling him that they’re just good at their jobs, so of course it went smoothly, but he’s been on their comms. Nothing ever goes this smoothly. 

“Sebastian Moran,” James starts. Sherlock stiffens all at once, tensing every single muscle. 

“Moran. As in Sebastian Moran, the one member of Moriarty’s network that I couldn’t track down, his second-in-command, dishonorably discharged sniper Sebastian Moran?”

“Yes,” Q confirms, having done his research into Moran since the encounter at the  cafe. Sherlock breathes a sigh of relief, but none of the tension leaves his body. 

“That would have been rather embarrassing if I were wrong,” Sherlock says under his breath, just barely audible to Q. 

“I don’t like this coincidence,” James says, half to himself. “Moran flirts with Eve, freaks Q out, and Sherlock’s been hunting for him.”

“The universe is rarely so lazy,” Sherlock says, holding Q a little closer to him the same way he did when Q scraped his knees up or gave himself a bloody nose out exploring as a kid. 

“You briefed us on Sherlock’s file-“

“I have a file?”

“Of course you have a file. Stop strangling me and let James talk.”

“ANYWAYS, I understand why Sherlock is concerned with Moran, if he’s Moriarty’s right hand. Why do you care, if you didn’t know that piece before?” 

Q fidgets. 

James crosses his arms and stares. 

Sherlock manages to wedge his new bowl of soup between Q’s bicep and his own stomach, sipping quietly.

Eve wanders in, takes one look at Q’s poker face and James’ thunderous expression, and walks out calling for Alec.

Alec, quite wisely, doesn’t do anything except make him a cup of tea that he can’t hold, since Sherlock is using one of his arms and has the other one trapped.

“I can do this all day,” Q warns James. He only raises an eyebrow in return, settling into his chair and returning to motionlessness. 

_The Le Chiffre mission_ , Q remembers. It so often is overshadowed by how it ended, by Vesper Lynd’s betrayal that he forgets exactly why James was chosen for it. He was a green agent at the time, at least for a Double-0, but he had the best poker face and a talent for telling when people are bluffing. In short, he’s screwed.

“Moran is the White Rook,” he spits out quickly, cutting off sharply on the k.

James hisses out a sharp breath. From the doorway, Alec growls deep in his throat, earning a sharp look from Eve. 

“That’s Mycroft’s business, the Grandmaster nonsense.” Sherlock tilts Q’s face upwards to look at him, both of them bent at awkward angles to manage it. Q pulls away slightly, slopping a bit of Sherlock’s soup before he stabilizes the bowl, meeting Sherlock’s verdigris stare with equal coldness. “Algernon-“

“Don’t ever try the middle name or I’ll share yours with the world.”

“Algernon Holmes, you are an imbecile of the highest order and probably possessed of some sort of debilitating mental condition if you think I don’t know when you’re hiding something. Tell me before I start digging enough to deduce it myself.”

He doesn’t have many options. If he were alone with Sherlock, he could possibly bluff his way out of it, hide or at least obscure the tells that Sherlock will be deducing from. Here, Sherlock can deduce from James and Alec’s tells, and they both know enough for him to make an educated guess and pretend he isn’t guessing. A ‘deduced possibility with the highest percent likelihood’, as he remembers Sherlock lecturing him anytime he accused Sherlock of guessing. 

“Sherlock, follow me. The rest of you, stay here.” He untangles himself from Sherlock, taking a moment to give Eve a glare that says that if she doesn’t obey him right now, anything requiring her to use her computer will be a trial of annoyances that will never be traced back to him. Constantly changing volume levels. A mute button that will unmute and mute itself at random times. Flaky internet access. Death by a thousand cuts, far more fun than outright destroying someone’s system. 

Just because he does a lot of crash and burn to hide the tracks of his agents extracting information doesn’t mean he’s lost the enjoyment of the finer arts. 

He leads Sherlock to the bedroom he’s been sharing with Alec and James, unsurprised when Sherlock trails in, blanket wrapped like a toga around his form. The temptation to step on it like Mycroft told him about doing in the Palace is almost too much. Almost. The seriousness of the moment keeps him still.

“What’s stopping them from lurking around the corner and listening? Spies spying, it’s almost like their job.”

“James and Alec know most of it, and I’m certain Eve has her own questions after she caught me after a late night swim in the MI6 pool.” He strips off his shirt, turning his back to Sherlock. “Hardly the type of decoration expected on R,though at least it was long since healed when she saw it.”

“Scarification, fully and cleanly healed. Precision of the lines says steady hand, I’d say scalpel based on the size and that precision. Using standard fading of scars, adjusted for my personal knowledge of how your skin scars from our childhood and a factor of aging, ten years old. Algae, why did someone slice a pawn into your back when you were twenty-four?”

“It was a reminder. A refresher, you might say, of an earlier lesson.” He loosens his belt, tugging his trousers down just far enough to reveal the design on his hip. 

“Branding.” Sherlock goes quiet, and Q knows he’s made the relevant deduction. “Fifteen years old. Algae, we dared each other to go skinny dipping twelve days before you were arrested at Christmas dinner.”

“You were arrested at Christmas dinner?” Eve calls out.

“You can at least pretend you aren’t listening,” he replies.

“ _That_ was definitely not on your hip then, and you barely left the house between then and your arrest. I would have noticed a change in gait caused by something this massive. Hence, it happened after your arrest, and not long afterwards. Within six months, I’d say. What did you get yourself into, Algae, and why didn’t Mycroft protect you?”

That, more than any physical tells, is a sign of Sherlock’s distress. He hates Mycroft’s ever-present care, the protectiveness of a brother much older than his siblings who were both too clever for their own good. Q wasn’t terribly fond of it himself, but after Mycroft made a new life for him where he shouldn’t have ever touched a computer again, he learned to appreciate it. 

“How long?” Sherlock demands. 

“Seven days. New Year’s Day. An auspicious start to a new life, a symbol of the resolutions they were giving me.” He intones the words the same way the White King had. He focused on the words to avoid thinking about the Adler woman choosing the perfect place and the White Rook- Moran, he knows him now, Moran- heating the iron. 

Sherlock’s brow furrows. “Is that an accurate mimicry of the one who,” he touches Q’s hip, fingers cool against the memory of burning flesh. 

“The White King. His intonation was unusual, and I forget so few details of that day. The one unidentified Grandmaster who was involved, now that I have Moran’s name. He was the one who pressed the iron to my skin and watched it burn, the one who took his time with my back five years later. Moran, I mean.”

“It’s him, then.” Sherlock backs off abruptly, crossing the room to stand at the window, fingers twitching as if itching for his violin. “He spites Mycroft as a matter of business, tortured you when neither you nor him could be much more than a child, and then started playing his game with me, a game that made me jump off a building to save three of the people who matter most to me. Moriarty. James Moriarty is your White King.”

Q dresses himself in silence while Sherlock speaks, horror dawning slowly as he realizes that all his recent problems may be more interlinked than he thought. Sherlock’s problems with Moriarty. The Grandmasters in opposition to Mycroft. With Moran here, it makes him wonder how connected his copycat terrorist, the one who kidnapped Sherlock, really is. 

“The universe is rarely so lazy, indeed.”

 


	30. Whispers

 

_Renee: I could almost be offended that you didn’t bring me in before with this setup._

_Q: It’s a fairly recent improvement. My predecessor wasn’t very enamored of computers._

_Renee: And this is so strange, you know, speaking to you candidly without being Pied Piper. Being Renee. Though I saw my file, I know how long you’ve known. Your file is suspiciously blank, Q dear. And sounds like your own writing._

_Q: I am Q. For now, that’s all that matters._

_Renee: As you will, then. Your Danielle got my daughter Ysabeau set up working in a cafe while she attends school, with a written contract to send her to whatever culinary school she desires if she graduates with top scores._

_Q: Danielle’s a good one. She and R are perfectly capable of running the Branch in my absence. Stay on their good side, and the world is yours. How’s the research coming?_

_Renee: Well… that’s what you aren’t going to like._

_Renee: You have a mole. Those files you sent me, the analysis on Moriarty’s network and the one you’re currently dealing with? You said it would be copied on the MI6 server as well, but it’s altered._

_Renee: I ran all the information you gave me from your personal files against the official copies, and anything having to do with Moriarty has been altered._

 

“Bloody hell!”

James, napping by his side, sits bolt upright, drawing his Walther from under his pillow and checking both doors and the window. Satisfied, he flicks the safety back on, settling back agains the headboard instead of returning to sleep. 

“Alec, Eve, I’m fine. Just overexcited. No, James already swept the room, you don’t have to, I don’t care that you’re sick of babysitting my brother. All I asked was that you keep him from blowing things up, which is why I left you in charge and not Alec.” He cuts them off before they have a chance to argue, though Alec manages an offended squawk that is really unflattering given that he’s supposed to be this macho secret agent. Completely ignoring the fact that both Alec and James sleep with guns under their pillows and Q sleeps in Doctor Who pajamas, yet is still capable of more damage than either of them. 

“Did you forget to plug your laptop in again?”

Q scowls. “Don’t taunt the man who controls your equipment. You can see my laptop just fine.”

James smirks, tossing the covers aside and securing his Walther away on the bedside table. He closes the lid on Q’s laptop, ignoring his annoyed sqwack as his fingers narrowly escape being pinched, and sprawls across Q’s lap to set it on the floor. 

“I have work to do, James!”

“So do I,” he agrees, straddling Q’s groin and leaning close, but not close enough to close the distance with a kiss, grinding down slightly to peak Q’s interest. 

“I have a leak in MI6, a mole in my own department,” he gasps, fighting not to respond to James because the moment he shows any weakness, James will exploit it and take him to pieces. 

“And I don’t like it either, but it can wait long enough for this.”

“Sherlock will know exactly what we’ve been up to,” he tries weakly, the excuse hollow in his own ears. He’s now arguing as not to lose, not to win. 

“Let him,” James says, lifting himself completely away from Q. Q jerks up to chase him, slipping further back against the bed when James denies him, and reaches up for him. 

“James,” he moans when he doesn’t return back to Q, slipping the rest of the way against flat against the bed. 

“You owe me, James, since I’m going to keep patrolling and let you relax,” Alec says through the earpiece he hasn’t taken off, and when James smirks he notices the skin-colored standard issue earpiece still coiled around the shell of James’ ear. 

He groans when James makes no move to remove it. Looks like he isn’t quite ready to exclude Alec from intimacy yet. Not that Q’s complaining.

“Try the dip above his collarbone, Q, the one he hasn’t broken. You know, the one without the scarring?”

Q complies before thinking about it, eliciting a pleased groan and a roll of his hips from James. He sets to sucking a mark there, a possessive reminder on James’ body for him to admire any time he gets insecure about his lovers and their perfect bodies that so many people have worshipped. Alec makes an appreciative sound at James’ quiet groans, and Q tears his lips away.

“Voyeur! Stop listening to my sex life, Eve!”

“You’ve listened to mine,” she objects, “even mine with James. And I didn’t do it on _purpose_.”

“Ugh, _Eve_ , you’re ruining what was turning out to be a really lovely moment.”

“That isn’t what you were saying ten minutes ago,” she complains, but he hears the tell-tale sound of an earpiece disconnecting from the network before he can argue that things _change_ , things like his arousal level, things like the way James is moving above him and _for the love of circuits and all that’s digital, why haven’t they been doing this all this time?_

“I’m going to ride you, Q,” he says, whisking a bottle of lube out from under the same pillow where he keeps his gun while he sleeps. Through the haze of his arousal, stronger at James’ words than at the writhing of his body as he gets out of his clothes without moving from Q, he gives the pillow a suspicious look. James sleeps with a bottle of lube and a gun under his pillow. That explains… quite a lot, actually.

“And do you know what I want to do to you later?” Alec adds as James arches his back, giving Q a show as he reaches behind himself. Q’s suddenly aware that he’s still fully dressed, the zipper of his corduroys getting uncomfortably tight and the top button of his collar restrictive. 

“What?” he begs when James is perfectly happy moving at a snail’s pace, silent but for tiny gasps accompanying the incremental rolls of his hips, settled just low enough on Q’s thighs to avoid giving him any stimulation against his growing erection. 

“Sorry, a little old lady was crossing the street with her grandchildren and she gave me a really disappointed look for the bulge in my trousers and told me that if I repented, God would still take me.”

James groans, and not in the good enjoying himself, hopefully will allow Q to get naked soon way. “Too much, Alec.”

“What, putting you off getting Q’s cock in your arse?” Alec continues without waiting for a response, tone dropping back into that seductive purr. “I want to watch you, Q, watch you suck James’ cock, watch you take it deep in your throat with your arse in the air for me, begging for that little bit more, that something that you’re missing. Can you imagine that for me, Q? Imagine the taste of James’ precome, bitter and just a bit salty, as you swirl your tongue around the head of his cock. He likes that, James does, and he’ll threat his hands through your curls to hold your head away when he can’t help but let his hips move, breaking that vaunted self-control of his.”

James, at two fingers and scissoring them with the same gruelingly sluggish pace, brushes against his prostate and sucks in a deep breath, releasing it in a drawn-out groan. Q tries to grind up into him, but James flattens his other hand against Q’s sternum and holds him still. 

“And when I’m good and ready, I’ll start to prepare you. I haven’t decided exactly how to best take you apart, but I will, and when you’re losing all of those inhibitions that keep you buttoned up and so perfectly poised, even on my comms, James will hold you still for me to take some more. And what we’re ready, we’ll take you together, trapped between our bodies at our mercy. And it doesn’t matter which one of us takes your cock and which one gives you ours, because either way you’ll be delirious with pleasure until you’re wrung out and can’t come another drop.”

Q reaches for his own clothes, scrabbling at his zipper and yanking at his buttons, heedless of the damage he’s likely doing to them in his haste. James doesn’t help, barely rocking back onto his heels so Q can strip out of his shirt and his cardigan and the fleece jacket between the two, why does he wear so many layers? This is awful.

The first shock of cool air against his skin is almost painful, but quickly becomes a balm against the fire burning just under his epidermis, the flush spreading down his skin until James shifts up in a smooth motion, seating himself abruptly on Q’s cock and stilling, pain wiping his features perfectly clean while Q struggles to not embarrass himself.

“He’s so tight, I’d bet,” Alec tells the sound of his and James’ combined panting. “James doesn’t surrender willingly enough to enjoy this regularly, more comfortable with taking pleasure and leaving someone else an insensate mess than trusting someone else to do the same to him. We’ve taken each other to wind down after missions enough times, I ought to know.” Alec pauses, sighing a quiet moan as he must get to a place in his patrol where he can adjust himself. “He was a terrible tease, wasn’t he?” Alec coos into their ears.

Q groans in reply, unable to vocalize anything with James so tight and hot, slick with the lube and slowly clenching and unclenching his muscles around Q in a breathlessly painful pleasure as he adjusts. 

“You can tell me, Q,” Alec continues in with the same sickly-sweet coating on his charged words, “tell me, did he tease you? Get you riled up, then make you watch while he prepared himself exquisitely slowly, every single hum of pleasure running along his nerves choreographed perfectly on his face in a concerto of rising arousal and the shock every time he brushes his prostate and that unhidden lust because he wants you. And he does want you, Q, I’ve seen him watching, caught him watching at the same times that I’m watching, because we both want you so much, Q. And now we have you, and here you are with your cock in James’ arse, but you’re listening to me, you’re both listening to me, and I want you to do one things for me.”

Alec falls silent, leaving them with their heavy breathing as they stare into each other’s eyes, so wrapped up in each other with Alec’s words twining around them, so personal right in their ear, not echoing around the rest of the room or there for Eve and Sherlock to hear listening at the vents, but just for the three of them. 

“What?” he manages, his voice hoarse and tight in his throat as James continues not moving, slowly shifting back and forth to find the angle he wants but keeping Q from moving at all.

“Fast and hard, James. Move now.”

Q cries out rawly as James lifts up and drops back into his lap, then again and again, sweat glistening in trails through the dips between his muscles and between Q’s fingers as he splays his hands against James’ pecs, not restraining his movement but keeping that connection when he throws his head back against the pillows, squeezing his eyes closed to try and hold out longer. Alec is making appreciative noises, slightly out of breath but still completely in control of himself, a sharp counterpoint to James’ wanton control and Q’s complete loss of it. 

He calls something out when he comes, some mangled conglomeration of Alec and James, loud enough that Eve whoops and shouts encouragement through the vents, James following after with a silent gasp. 

“Too public for me to take the edge off,” Alec says conversationally, as if they aren’t dealing with the details of their own sexual relationship and as if he hadn’t just helped Q and James get off without him. James pulls away, giving them both a perfunctory wipe with a towel- also from under the pillow, _seriously_ James- and collapses back on the other side, returning his gun to under his pillow.

“What?” Q asks dumbly, not quite comprehending.

“Later, Q, James, and we’ll do it my way. After all, you’ve both gotten off quite spectacularly, and here I am left wanting.” Q can almost imagine the quirk of Alec’s eyebrow as he insinuates everything he was just telling them about, all while continuing his patrol. “Later.”

“Later,” James promises.

“Later,” Q echoes.

Q reaches for his laptop, dragging the sheet over his lap for the moment, coming down from the hormonal high. He needs to focus, clear his mind to find the mole in his department. Business. Get back to business, even knowing all that Alec wants to do to him, that Alec is still unsatisfied and planning.

“Well, I must say that was fascinating. Is that usually the dynamic between three partners when one isn’t present? If John knows, he hasn’t shared with me, so you’ll have to do, even though that means adjusting for different preferences in my study.”

Q sits bolt upright, dragging the sheet around himself to stalk out of their bedroom. “Who the _FUCK_ gave Sherlock an earpiece?!?!?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry 'bout the delays- work's been crazy! Hope you enjoy!


	31. Information and its Suspicious Lack

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look! It's plot.

 

“And so, information has been altered or removed entirely from the MI6 files, from the Q-Branch archives. That means it has to be someone in my branch, to do it without my notice.”

“Mmpff.”

Q  ignores Sherlock, skimming personnel files to jog his memory on who would have the talent to do that. He had Renee wipe their conversation from the records and continue the tasks he gave her before, communicating via Pied Piper and Logos if she finds anything out. 

“I would say one of my hackers in Computer Science and Engineering, but that’s too obvious for someone who avoided my notice doing this. So, the question is, Weapons Tech or Defensive Assets? Could be either, if they were simply placed by someone managing to get a mole in where they can, but someone this skilled was probably placed intentionally. So, logic asks, where could they do the most damage?”

“Hrrmpff,” Sherlock argues, rocking back and forth in his chair to try and loosen his bonds and just succeeding in tipping himself over, hitting the floor hard. Nothing sounds like it broke, so Q doesn’t care. 

“Defensive Assets,” Eve says, crossing her ankles and swiping across her tablet. On their shared screen, the files for all Q-Branch members in CSE are wiped away, followed by the ones for Weapons Tech. Which is most of the Branch, but at least it rules out the four other people- five, now- in CSE and the twelve in Defensive Assets. 

“I hate suspecting thirty-seven members of my own department.”

“Fifteen. You can ignore Maintenance,” Eve wipes them away as she speaks. “If we’re assuming this is intentional, they would want someone able to affect R&D, not just maintaining the weapons.”

“If the Double-0s would return anything intact,” Q complains.

From the edge of the room, James smirks and Alec almost misses a step. Sherlock squirms on the floor uselessly, glaring at Q.

“Alec, sit Sherlock up again and take the gag off. If he has something nice to say, he can speak again.”

Alec complies quickly, taking more care with Sherlock than Q did tying him up. He could have asked James for help, but Sherlock’s still recovering and he’s always underestimated Q. 

“Algernon,” Sherlock begins, “in what world did Mummy raise you to tie up your brother and gag him in a relatively minor disagreement?”

“In what world did Mummy raise you to spy on your little brother’s sex life and then make comments about it? I will gag you again, Sherlock, don’t doubt that.”

“And if you do, I won’t look at your personnel files and find which one has the right pressure point to be convinced to turn traitor.”

“And I don’t need you to.”

“Yes,” Sherlock’s voice drops all hint of teasing, his baritone deadly serious and the full force of his focus on Q. “Sentiment. You indulge in it, I’ve seen that much, and you’ve had fifteen years to get attached to some of these people. I’ve never met them before. You need my impartiality.”

Q frowns. Eve confiscates his tablet, handing it to Sherlock, and slices his bonds. 

“Now give me the couch. I need to go to my Mind Palace, too.”

“Fuck your Mind Palace.” He doesn’t leave, stretching across the rest once Eve gets up. Sherlock flops down on top of him anyways.

Nearly an hour later, Sherlock jerks upright, digging bony elbows and a bonier arse into Q, who yelps with pain and promptly tips him off the couch. James and Alec come stand ominously at either end of the couch, that protective glint back in their eyes.

“I can take care of this annoying brother, at least. Save the overprotectiveness for the other one. Tit for tat.”

Alec snorts. “I’d rather take my chances with this one putting an eyeball in my tea than with the Black King.”

“A diseased eyeball, maybe,” Sherlock grumbles, sprawling on the floor rather than picking himself up. 

Q gives him ten minutes of silence, of Alec fidgeting and James winning a staring contest with him because he has an iron will and Sherlock gets bored. He taps at his tablet, working on creating faux information leaks about new players in the trade, keeping themselves underground. With enough details, he’ll make the other hackers on his level uncomfortable and they’ll slip up a bit, allowing him the leeway to establish Nostos more firmly as if he was always there.

“The Verne woman. Which means you have a second leak in MI6.”

“Verne? I don’t have any techs by that name.”

Sherlock sighs. “Blind. It’s obvious, really. Someone with power who refuses any more until it would be more surprising not to accept it. They should have picked a better decoy relative, they’re clearly not related at all.”

“No.” 

“Q,” Alec asks, irritation in his voice. “You can’t keep us in the dark, not about this.”

Sherlock gives him what might be an almost apologetic look, from him, but then barges on anyways. “Caitlyn Verne, your R. She and Amelia Elles claim to be aunt and niece, claim that Elles is Verne’s sister’s daughter by blood, but they’re not related. It may be an adoption being covered up even now, but it’s your best shot.”

“No,” James denies.

Q wants to agree with him. He’s trusted Cait for years, trusted her and Danielle with so much, but as with anyone else he’s known for this long, there are inconsistencies. 

The woman who he never remembered, the one who sat at a desk and busied herself with paperwork when the White Rook and the White King came in the middle of the night to claim him after two days at MI6, and Mycroft’s five days of arrest and processing.

Cait was with him, taking him out to celebrate his promotion to R when the White Rook led a group of masked men just outside of MI6, throwing her into a wall and he thought knocking her unconscious while they took him. 

002 was one of the last agents to see Boothroyd before the explosion at MI6.

“Eve,” he says, keeping his voice perfectly calm while his world falls apart, again.  “Get me a private line to M. If Sherlock’s wrong, it means a little bit of embarrassment for us. If he’s right, M could be in danger the moment they suspect that we know.”

“No,” James cuts them off. “I lost one M already and I’ve just learned to like this one. We take them out on our own, without alerting them.”

“And how,” Eve asks, “do you propose we do that?”

Alec grins. “By creating a bigger distraction.”

 

***

 

Q plays the CCTV feed from the restaurant into their flat in London, playing Eve and 001’s hidden cameras for two other angles. The look of distress that rips across Sherlock’s face when he walks in, played off on a deduction about a baby on the way and a disguise trick that really has seen better days. 

John. Sherlock’s John, who he never told he loved him and now is sitting with the agent sent to protect him by Mycroft, on their fifth date while he’s trying to convince her to go home with him tonight. 

Mycroft wanted to go public first, make it a big affair with all of Mycroft’s strengths and his abilities to spread rumors like wildfire across the Internet. Anthea wanted to let Sherlock approach John in private, deal with their personal issues before facing the public. Sherlock, of course, only wanted to see John as soon as possible and damn the consequences. 

“It’s going to be a disaster.”

Alec pours James a glass of scotch, himself a glass of vodka, and then considers for a few moments before pouring another glass of vodka. He carries all of them with his fingers in the drinks, dropping James’ into his waiting hand. He sips his, curling his body around Q with his feet in James’ lap. 

“Let’s drink to that, then, because more of a disaster means less work for us to protect you.” 

Q snuggles back against him, leaning his head against James’ shoulder and pretending everything is going to turn out perfectly well. He knows that if it weren’t for the fact that they’re working right now, Alec’s free hand would move from resting lightly on Q’s thigh to teasing, evoking the images he planted there before everything got so busy. This is the most alone time they’ve had since then, but Q’s laptop is attached to every screen they own and the ones projected onto their walls for a reason and neither James nor Alec will disturb him. Not much, at least.

“Sherlock,” he warns, watching his brother’s theatrics that go unnoticed by John, watching Sherlock start to crack under the weight of the void between them, and if anyone understands what he’s going through right now it would be Q. He knows what it’s like to be dead in the eyes of the people who care most about you, to not exist and then to suddenly show up again. He knows that Mycroft and Anthea are both wrong, that there is no good way to do this, that John is going to be hurt no matter what and that they will just have to be there for Sherlock to pick up the pieces.

Hopefully, that will excuse any odd behavior on his part, keep Cait from suspecting anything. If Cait really is one of the White Grandmasters, or at least a tool of theirs, she will know that Sherlock is his brother. If not, she will excuse his oddness because Sherlock is now his cover identity’s brother-in-law and everyone knows how poorly he reacted to Sherlock’s death.

If not, Plan B.

“Well, short version. Not dead,” Sherlock says, and the other CCTV camera is the only one that remains steady as Eve and Alfred wince. They’re openly staring now, as are all of the other patrons in the restaurant. 

“He’s going to punch him.” James sounds sure, so Q doesn’t propose a bet.

“John’s a soldier and one who dealt with Sherlock willingly. He has more restraint than that.”

“No, he doesn’t. Just watch.”

As if on cue, John launches himself at Sherlock, taking him to the ground- Q winces this time, he knows Sherlock’s still underweight and not quite recovered from his captivity in the cold- and Eve and Alfred are among the first to move to intervene, Mycroft’s Mary helping Eve to drag John back while Alfred does a quick check on Sherlock’s health.

“Well, that went well,” he comments, earning a “Fuck off, Algernon,” whispered into Sherlock’s hidden microphone. 

“No punch, though,” Alec gloats to James. “Bet you there won’t be one.”

The second attempt at talking to John, this time in a second restaurant with Mary standing as a guard, Eve and Alfred replaced by Lyra and Viola as harmless twins eating together and completely, utterly uninterested in them. Mycroft warned Mary, gave her a list of restaurants of various levels of formality where Q has his Double-0s stashed via a personal favor from M. Q’s pretty sure M and Mycroft have had words, that M probably now knows who he is. Not that it matters much, if it comes to Plan B.

Sherlock says something, anything, whatever it is Q doesn’t catch but both James and Alec groan in unison and John tries to throttle Sherlock, getting them kicked out of the second restaurant for the evening.

“Our food just arrived,” Lyra complains.

“I’m not kicking you out. Enjoy the rest of your evening, ladies. I’m sure I’ll be sending you somewhere awful soon enough.”

“You really are the best, Q,” Viola chimes in. “Make it somewhere snowy. I hate sharing the beaches with all the people avoiding the winters.”

James leans over to Q’s earpiece. “Is that why Alec and I always end up in the beach resorts in the winters? I thought it was because he likes us better.”

Both twins look into each others’ cameras so that they stare directly off the wall, giving the ‘eerie twin stare’ that they perfected over the years. 

“He does, yeah,” Viola says.

“But we bribe him,” Lyra finishes.

James and Alec turn identical looks of indignation on him. Q shrugs. Lyra and Viola have gotten very good at finding things he didn’t know he wanted until he wanted them.

“I’m deeply offended.”

“No, you aren’t,” he corrects, picking up the CCTV cameras to follow them to yet another restaurant, this one an all-night deli of some sort. Sherlock is starting to take on that haunted look that Q remembers seeing from before he started doing rash things at school. 

“He’s going to make another mustache comment and John’s at the end of his patience,” James argues, more at Alec than at Q.

“Yes on the comment, no on the punch. Too mundane, too predictable, and Sherlock wouldn’t like John if he were both of those. Right, Q?”

Q doesn’t bother looking as he taps into all local CCTV feeds, receiving an irritated message as Mycroft tries to do the same thing, and the cameras carried by 003, who he forever thinks of as Danielle’s husband and not as George, 004, who Q took the last four years to win over to his side like the other Double-0s, and Amelia Elles, because 008 is guarding M at a conference, James and Alec are guarding him, and it would be too suspicious to leave her out. 

Elles is watching 004. The other two are watching Sherlock and John. And Mary, though she doesn’t need to be watched, not that they know it. The five of them decided to keep that bit to themselves, keep her as a harmless figure and a secret bodyguard with an excuse to be near Sherlock and John.

There are too many loose ends as is. The CIA caught a man when he had James and Alec flush out the hotspots in Detroit that he identified after reclaiming Sherlock, but Sherlock says nobody caught the woman who was in charge of it all. Too convenient. And that’s on top of how easy it was to reclaim Sherlock. 

He doesn’t like it. It stinks.

Alec crows with delight when Sherlock makes a comment about John’s mustache, followed by another comment that’s so incredibly dense that Q isn’t surprised when John smashes his nose. 

“Leave them alone,” Q instructs when 003 starts to surge to his feet. “Watson’s gotten his anger out. He’s done for now.”

“This is a terrible way to act after jumping off a roof and all,” Danielle’s husband replies, settling back into his seat without ever having reached for any of the weapons stashed on his person. He’s lovely to work with on missions like this, Danielle has him well-trained.

“If you’ve read the blog, you know we shouldn’t be surprised.”

“Shouldn’t be complaining, should we? Easy mission, very low chance of attempted beheading.”

“I apologized to Danielle about that.”

“One mission with an attempted ceremonial beheading is part of the job. Two makes me feel like 007, the odd missions always seem to happen to him. Four, Q, four makes me think either you or M wants me out of the way.”

“Well, with 007 guarding me and taking fewer missions, maybe you’re their second choice. I swear I’m not actively trying to kill you. If I were, you would know it.”

“Reassuring.”

Alec pokes him in the side. “Why do you give James all the odd missions?”

“I don’t. Just like how every single one of your missions ends with explosions, so does he end up with insane villains with diabolical plans who really want to tell him all about it instead of being rational and killing him.”

“I happen to like that they don’t kill me,” James says, tickling the bottom of Alec’s right foot until he squirms and shuts up. 

“Well, it is ridiculous, isn’t it?”

“A bit.”

CCTV has Mary speaking briefly to Sherlock, then getting into a cab with John. She texts Anthea, informing her that she’ll be dropping John off at Baker Street, so it ought to be best to keep Sherlock far from there. 

Q leans into their arms for a moment, stretching his fingers as the CCTV feeds return to the normal London sights one after the other and the Double-0s and Eve finish their meals. Nothing out of the ordinary, for now.

Not until he gets to work. Rumors of a big secret reveal in London, spread through all the social networks, vague articles about something nobody will want to miss, some cryptic comments on Sherlock’s blog and John’s blog. Mycroft will release the press release in the morning and bring Sherlock in for a press conference of sorts, a chance for them to take all their photos. 

As distractions go, it is a rather large one.

 

***

 

_Sherlock Holmes Alive: How Did He Do It?_

_The Detective and The Blogger- Trouble in Baker Street?_

_Hat Detective Alive_

_‘We Thought He Was Dead This Whole Time’: The Inside Scoop with Holmes’ Associates_

 

***

 

It isn’t enough.

Time for Plan B.

If Sherlock’s return didn’t shake them up enough for him to move, this certainly will.

 

***

 

“Well, when it rains, it pours, doesn’t it? More drama for the Holmeses, who came under the spotlight with the faked suicide and subsequent return from the dead of celebrated detective Sherlock Holmes.”

“Tonight, we have exclusive information about the Holmeses third son, Algernon Holmes, who vanished on Christmas Day fifteen years ago from the family home. Investigators never found any sign of foul play nor any evidence to the whereabouts of the boy, who was nineteen at the time of his disappearance. His body has never been found.”

“It’s been speculated by many that the disappearance of his younger brother Algernon was what sparked Sherlock Holmes’ passion for crime and specifically, for cases deemed by most to be unsolvable. Is this the secret behind Holmes’ faked suicide? Was he searching for evidence of what happened to his brother? Tune in later tonight for our exclusive coverage of this new development.”

“In other news, the celebrations for the Fifth of November are truly underway in London! Here we go to Kathleen, on-site with bonfire preparations and warnings to keep you safe this Guy Fawkes Night.”


	32. Allegrissimo, Spianato

 

_Deep breath, Q._

Q inhales until he hits the constriction of his formal attire, meticulously selected by James, M, and Mycroft in what was probably the most terrifying day of the five tailors’ lives. Bespoke suits, they told him in hushed whispers, were never meant to be made this fast. 

_No, no, no. Deep breath, Algernon. Wouldn’t do to expose my role in MI6, too._

It’ll be weird, being Algernon again.

“Hold still,” Danielle harasses him as she threads the wires for his microphone from the battery and transmission pack at the small of his back up along his spine to the clip at his lapel. 

“It tickles! Wired microphones are so primitive, Danielle. I don’t know if I can do this.”

“They’re industry standard, Q, and you’re supposed to be pretending to be normal. Well, as normal as you can be, with brothers like those. I’ll have to start sending George to feed that Sherlock of yours, too, with how skinny he looks.”

“I’ll have to tell Sherlock to fear for his life, then.” He can imagine George zip-tying Sherlock to his chair in Baker Street only too easily, sitting on the arm of the chair himself with a bowl of some sort of healthy gruel, pinching Sherlock’s nose until he has to breathe and force-feeding him. It only requires substituting Sherlock’s living room at Baker Street for his office in Q-Branch and Sherlock for him.

It wasn’t his finest moment.

But also not even the most embarrassing thing he’s done in the Branch. That was after the death of the last 004, when Alec plied him with alcohol to step away from his keyboard and he hadn’t learned quite yet how strong Alec mixes drinks.

“Ready?” the studio’s people ask- he forgets what their job titles are, it isn’t important, not with everything else going on.

“Not at all, but it’ll have to do.”

He sits down on the couch provided, with James and Alec just off-screen standing guard, and watches them count down to going on air, fingers flicking down one by one. 

“Good afternoon and welcome to the show. Would you like to tell our viewers a little bit about yourself?”

Q takes a deep breath. This is it. If Plan B doesn’t work, Mycroft is going to kill him, and kill him rather slowly. 

“Hello. My name is Andrew White, but you probably recognize me better by my birth name, Algernon Holmes.”

Dead silence. 

James and Alec tense up, watching the crowd anxiously. Mycroft’s men vetted every single person in this studio, but James and Alec would be no good as bodyguards if they weren’t suspicious anyways. 

“And what proof do you have to back up this claim?” one of the hosts asks, barely keeping her voice steady.

“Only the best for you, of course.” He waves at the audience, managing not to shake as Mummy advances on him. He can’t put it any other way. She’s an advancing army and he really should have listened to Mycroft and spent more time with Mummy after Sherlock revealed his survival to his family, and he is _never_ telling Mycroft that he was right. Ever. 

“Violet Holmes! How great to finally meet the legendary matriarch who raised Sherlock Holmes!”

In the front row, Mycroft rolls his eyes and Q can almost hear Anthea telling him that if he wasn’t so insistent on being a shadowy figure shrouded in secrets, he could complain, but since he is, Sherlock gets all the spotlight.

“He was the most difficult one, yes,” she says, sitting next to Q and patting his hand absentmindedly. “But I can confirm for you, by DNA test and the more truthful mother’s intuition, that this is my son.”

“And where has he been all these years?”

“That is not my business.” Mummy turns to Q, giving him a sharp look completely at odds with her usual placidity in the face of her sons’ eccentricities. “Mycroft got your father and I tickets for this week. You and Sherlock will be attending, dear. I shan’t take no for an answer.”

“Yes, Mummy,” he agrees. In the audience, the camera pans to Sherlock as he sticks his tongue out. Oh, Q’s going to go to town with that clip, and because it’s public he can. Sherlock will be dealing with the tabloid rumors about the Consulting Five-Year-Old forever. It’s catchy and perfect revenge for listening in on him. 

“Play nice, Algernon,” Mummy warns. He looks up at her innocently, all wide eyes and open palms.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You didn’t have to. I’m your mother, I know these things.” Mummy turns her smile immediately to the hosts. “May I bring my Sherlock up here? I just got both my boys back, I do not want to be separated from either.”

“Of course!” they chime, and the cameras follow Sherlock as he gets up and joins Q and Mummy on the couch. Mummy looks from one son- wide innocent eyes, regularly arranges deaths from behind his laptop screen while his two lovers bring him snacks and massage his shoulders- to the other- still underweight and recently recovered from faking his death and being kidnapped while supposedly dead. 

“Behave,” she admonishes.

“Yes, Mummy,” they chime, glancing at each other with the same twin looks of amusement from their childhood, when they were so in sync with each other above anybody else in the world. And then they dissolve into giggles, the tension snaps, and Mummy smiles beatifically at the cameras.

“It’s good to have my boys back,” she confirms.

 

***

 

When he wakes, Alec and James are in the kitchen reading out their favorite headlines and munching on corned beef hash, eggs, and toast that’s slightly burnt. James must have let Alec help.

“ _He’s the Most Interesting Man in London_ ,” Alec reads with a dramatic flourish, pausing to chew a bite of toast, “ _And For Once, He’s Not the Holmes You’re Thinking Of_.”

“Too complicated,” James comments. “Try this one. _Playing Dead: A Holmes Family Tradition_.”

“Boring. _Two Years? Try Fifteen._ ”

“Vague, if you don’t already know the story, and bland. Oh, look. This one’s not about Q, it’s about Sherlock. _The Consulting Five-Year Old: Britain Sees a New Side of Sherlock Holmes_.”

“I was busy last night. I’d love to know where he got that straight pin he was poking me with, but it took half an hour at dinner before I slapped it out of his hand and got yelled at by Mummy.” The moment he sits down, Alec starts preparing a fresh cup of tea and James pulls his breakfast out of the oven, where he always keeps it warm. He’d best keep them, because he’s not sure he’ll ever be able to go back to living alone. 

“Well, you sort of deserved it for- ow!” 

James gives Alec a disbelieving look. Alec rubs his shin and goes to rinse his hand under cold water in the sink from where he spilt Q’s tea. “Sometimes, I swear you’re an idiot.”

“Sometimes, I agree with you. Kiss it better?”

“Sap,” James tosses back, but draws Alec’s injured hand to his lips anyways.

“Is MI6 in an uproar?” he asks, knowing that they’ll have both checked in last night and again this morning to confirm today’s orders and verify Q’s continued safety. 

James, who had second watch last night, passes his phone over. He has six missed calls from M, twelve from Cait and thirteen from Danielle, and about three calls from each of the Double-0s. All of Q-Branch has left him messages in his email, as have most of the agents he’s dealt with in more than a minor capacity while running the Double-0 missions. 

Chaos.

Perfect.

“Laptop, please. The red one.”

“You know,” James says as he shoos Alec off to find Q’s laptop, “most people don’t have that problem.”

“What problem?” he manages around a mouthful of hash, half-mumbling behind his hand in an attempt to avoid the utterly disappointed look James gives him when he talks with his mouth full. James must never be given the opportunity to teach Mummy that look. He’d actually be shamed into using the manners Mycroft glared them into learning as children, the manners Mycroft conveniently forgets nowadays at home in favor of his own biting wit. 

“People have their laptop, or even their work laptop and personal laptop. You have four in the flat, Q, and I had to stop you from bringing two more home yesterday after the interview. You make your branch build you exceedingly overpowered laptops as a stress response.”

Q looks up from his breakfast, gaze meeting James’ steadily over tea that’s a little too warm. “Problem?”

James keeps his impassive face, perfectly smooth but for the brief flash of calculated irritation. To a lesser man, it would read as suppressed irritation under a very good facade. To him, it is but part of the facade, and he knows better.

James keeps his silence. Q masks a sigh by piling a bite into his mouth, keeping the silence while he chews. It winds around them in a slowly tightening spiral, an easy build of tension waiting not to snap between them, but to uncoil and allow them to move freely once again. Tighter, tighter, it winds and still James watches, still Q eats, and it feels like an eternity yet is only a few bites before he gives in, pressing the question.

“And what seems to be the problem, Bond?” he asks, retreating into formality for a moment, unsure of his standing with his lover so cool in the easy domesticity of their home.

“I’ve been asking for an exploding pen,” he utters with a perfectly straight face, managing to hold it for a solid count of five before they both burst into laughter.

Alec joins them with a fond smile, having missed the joke but clearly delighted to have peals of laughter ringing through the rooms. It is normally such a staple of their home but so terribly scarce with the winding threads just in their grasp, the tapestry still beyond his purview. 

He _hates_ that he can’t see the full picture, that he’s catching glimpses of schemes with no rhyme nor reason behind them, with so little actually linking them but some coincidental shared characters, perhaps coincidence, it still waits to be seen, nothing linking them but the _knowledge_ in his bones that it’s all linked, that the ache in his hip and his shoulder when he looks at these puzzles is no mistake. It’s the first time that he can truly understand what Sherlock tried to explain to him, back when he first started experimenting with various drugs, before what Mycroft and Anthea both refer to as the Dark Years and Mummy and Father don’t refer to at all, that Sherlock was looking for different types of drugs to modulate his mind. Stimulants when he needed to race ahead, when his mind could not keep up with the speed at which he needed it to, when there is so much to absorb and so little time to process it in. Sometime he needs to be slowed down, to deal with Mycroft’s little goldfish and the nonsense in their funny little brains without feeling like they’re so terribly, horribly, slow. And sometimes, when the puzzle is a constant pressure on him, tugging and poking and making him run in frustratingly inescapable circles, he needed something to numb the Gordian knot until he could find the right tool to cut to the heart without losing too much of the structure of it.

He’s never been tempted before, but the frustration of it and the knowledge that at least for a while, it helped Sherlock- _ignoring the truly catastrophic years that followed, of course_ \- makes it a glowing option when he’s tired, or confused, or stuck, or simply needs the numbness- _the distraction_ \- from the simple idea that someone he trusted so much has betrayed him. 

_Cait._ If she truly has betrayed him- no, not betrayal, everything they suspect would say that she’s been working for the White Grandmasters the entire time, before he ever came to Q-Branch, brilliant idea of hers, to turn a child too brilliant not to notice into her best shield, into someone who would see no wrong, Cait was always clever- then it makes him feel an utter tit. He’s always taken her side, hers and Danielle’s, except when against each other or against himself. How much damage might he have wrought in his ignorance? No, how much damage might Cait have wrought in his ignorance? And if Amelia is in on it too, the damage unseen in the Double-0s and the supporting agents, damage blamed on missions or PTSD setting in or any of a thousand things overlooked by the agents or those who tend them for a myriad of reasons and an even more numerous list of excuses.

“Enough.”

The words break through the haze momentarily, accompanied as they are by a firm pair of hands settling on his shoulders, but are lost soon enough to the murmur of chatter, some his own and some external stimuli and some sense memory and some a mix of all three in a way he accepts in the manner of a dream, that it _is_ and the why or how or any other niggling questions will have to wait- for what, he knows not, but for something, there’s always something, _something-_

External stimuli interrupt his whirl of thought, a brush of fingertips, a brush of lips, too vague to be identified, no, was that a brush of fingertips across his lips? It’s all muddled and he reaches for his keyboard, but it isn’t the right keyboard, not at all, and the vibration of his phone, taken from him before he can manage to make it work, fingers flying across the keyboard in a desperate attempt to put his thoughts in line. He denies his gifts, normally, all of his computer work required more learning and less of this natural talent and he’s rotten at it, how does Sherlock ever manage? _He doesn’t_ , his memory reminds him, because that’s what memories do.

Someone lifts him, and the grand piano in the corner of the flat is in front of him, keys bared and waiting. He strikes right in to a composition of his own thought- _abandon_ , _fortissimo_ ,  _velocissimo_ , _capriccioso_ , - unaccompanied piano in wild cyclical rhythms, changing key with each repetition, then changing the time and starting again. _Canon_ , but not quite, a changing repetition that keeps him free despite being trapped in the same loop. _Allegrissimo_ , he races from note to note, the notes smoother as he starts to feel the music instead of the tumult, losing himself in the playing, finding himself in his head, the two so tangled up as to be almost one but so crucially different.

The violin joins him _unisono_ , flying through additional trills and dropping notes without ever falling completely out of syncopation, _spianato_ to his _stretto_ , taking his frantic playing and guiding it back to old favorites, to the song Mummy hummed while cooking and an ornate version of the first tune Mycroft made them learn together, to songs of his own composition that he recognizes himself leading to haunting snippets that sing hollowly on Sherlock’s violin, made whole by his piano. 

No _adagio_ , not today, that isn’t Sherlock’s style and it is very much him leading this now, guiding Q out of the madness of his own mind and into a world where he’s no closer to a solution than before.

“It happens,” he hears John telling James and Alec, “It isn’t anything you said, far as Sherlock thinks. Just the pressure. Don’t try to keep him from his work. It’ll make it worse.” 

“You’ve been busy,” he tells Sherlock’s back, still not facing each other, they never needed to. He means the music, he means John’s seemingly placid presence here despite their spectacle of the other day, he means so much and Sherlock plays on, something almost a lullaby. The last note drifts off _a niente_ , and he feels Sherlock lower his violin, still facing away but folding down to share the piano bench with Q.

“It won’t keep the anguish of an unsolved puzzle away for long,” Sherlock whispers, “but it works wonders for purging those emotions.”

“What do we do now?”

Sherlock sighs, sounding wearier than his thirty-seven years. “I brought everything I have about Moriarty and his network. Now, Algae, we stop letting Moriarty separate us and we win the game.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I personally really like this one, but PLEASE tell me if it doesn't make much sense. I'm a big fan of run on sentences as a storytelling device, but without a beta reader, I'm never sure how much of it is making sense in my head but not on paper!


	33. The Empty Era of Before-John and After-Sherlock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, have some Sherlock.

 

“Once a soldier, always a soldier,” Sherlock mentions on the cab ride back to Baker Street. He knew how to deal with Algae. The moment Trevelyan explained the entire situation, Algae’s sudden loss of touch with reality, he told them to put his brother in front of a piano. Algae’s like Sherlock, in that way- he won’t be parted from his music for too long. There had to be a piano.

He could deal with Algae, but not with two highly-trained soldiers hell-bent on protecting his brother from his own head, burying their panic under steely determination to destroy whatever plagues him.

If only it were that easy. Sherlock could have purged his own demons long ago, were it so.

“You’d best remember it,” John answers tightly, clipping off his words with the rigid control that so characterizes John Watson, but with none of the easy acceptance of _his_ John. 

This isn’t his John.

This is John-after-Sherlock, shattered and not-quite pieced together by the time. This is Mary Morstan’s John, despite her making it clear to Sherlock that she’s stepping back, that she was there as protection from outside threats and from himself. She told John as well. Saying that he took it poorly would be… too simplistic of an explanation, certainly not one he could give. Externally, he took it gracefully, with a little tensing of the lines of his body and a curt nod before dismissing Mary from Baker Street. Within the confines of Baker Street… Mycroft sent Mrs. Hudson on a brief vacation to see her sister, keeping her away from the mess of every single one of Sherlock’s experiments destroyed in increasingly dramatic ways. 

Which would be annoying, even if Sherlock had been consulted on Mary’s mission, which he _wasn’t_ , so thanks for that, Mycroft. 

“What you did back there… it was good.”

John looks across the few feet of the chasm between them, across time lost and across the heartbreak that drove John away from Sherlock’s patient seduction and into the arms of another. Sherlock schools his face into blankness, feeling his loss more acutely than when John first looked at him with unguarded pain and betrayal in his eyes. 

“The last time you said that, I tried to sacrifice my life to save your own from a madman who had kidnapped me. A madman who then convinced you to fake your suicide and ruin my life. I don’t appreciate the reminder.”

Sherlock closes his eyes, accepting John’s admonishment. 

It matters to him that John helped him save Algae from himself, save Algae’s lovers from the ravages of a bad night. Day. Time. Even if it doesn’t matter to John, it matters to him. 

He was just trying to say that.

“Still. Thank you.”

Sherlock makes sure to pay the cabbie himself instead of leaving John to do it as always, stopping to greet Mrs. Hudson and letting her press biscuits and a tea tray into his hands with a warning to give John time, he’ll come around. Sherlock hopes she’s right. He would play for John, play John’s favorites with all of the skill of long practice when John is away so he can play them when the nightmares come, but right now he fears that the remnants of Q’s breakdown would cling to his music. 

Not that it would have stopped him before, but that is one of the many things that has changed in this new era after Sherlock’s suicide. Every time John leaves in a huff, Sherlock fears this will be the time he won’t return, so he does his best to be a perfect flatmate and never give John and reason to leave. Today’s emergency was the first time he’s asked for help since his return.

He makes John’s tea perfectly, not bothering to make himself a cup before curling up in his chair, knees pulled in tight. 

They have an idea, more like the vaguest impression of an idea, but it might be enough if they act quickly and pull something off before the dual shock of his return from a very public suicide and Algae’s return from a fifteen-year disappearance wears off. 

“John,” he asks quietly.

John ignores him.

“John, please. Help me with this, and I’ll leave, if that’s what you want. Give Baker Street to you, vanish into obscurity. Keep bees in Sussex, perhaps. Mycroft could arrange it.”

John sets down his cup with a click of ceramic on the resin of Mrs. Hudson’s tea tray, resting his hands back on the arms of his chair, feet planted firmly in front of him. He meets Sherlock stare for stare, posture open and heart closed, the complete opposite of Sherlock. 

“And why,” John asks, ice cold, “do you think I want that?”

Sherlock tucks further into his coat, turning it into a languid search for warmth. The fire isn’t burning. See? Warmth. He just recovered from mild hypothermia. It’s plausible. He’s absolutely not nervous at all.

“Simple logic. You resent my presence back in your life, you didn’t leave Baker Street after my death. Hence, I can offer you Baker Street without me in it.”

John takes a long sip of his tea, then sets it down with the same muted click as before, leveling Sherlock with a flat gaze that shreds him more than he shreds others with a quick flick of eyes and scathing deductions. John’s gaze says he _sees_ Sherlock, sees everything he tries to hide, that none of the bluster of his personality fools John after all this time. 

“Sentiment. The great Sherlock Holmes has such a simple blindspot when it comes to sentiment of any kind.” John’s voice contains the barest hint of mockery, and Sherlock flushes, then flinches back and flushes darker at the obvious tell. He’s supposed to be above all that. 

“High-functioning sociopath,” he reminds John a touch sharply.

“No, I don’t think you are. I didn’t think you were before, and that phone call-“ John’s voice breaks and he takes a moment to compose himself again, straightening up into precise military posture unconsciously as he does so- _into battle_ \- “that phone call sealed it. No matter how much I wanted to convince myself that you were a sociopath, that you never felt for us the way we all felt for you, I couldn’t reconcile that phone call into any scenario.”

“Emotion is a simple bluff,” Sherlock lies, suddenly desperate to restore his defenses, the invulnerability of connecting to no one, the safety of the diagnosis he preferred. 

“I’m not finished, Sherlock.” Captain Watson snaps, then settles back into his chair slightly as John returns. “If there were any doubt, after your return, it was dispelled seeing you at the interview with your mother and brother, and then again tonight. Come here, Sherlock, and let me look at your hands. You played for hours on end to bring him back to himself.”

Sherlock flexes his fingers, hidden inside his gloves from the first moment Algae was himself enough to notice. He assumed that John and Algae’s agents were too busy with soldier talk or worry about Algae or whatever it is that they do to notice him.

“I’m fine.”

“Sherlock.”

He tries a different approach. “You’ve seen me play for hours before and never worried.”

“I’ve seen you composing, where you play a snippet and then write, play some more and then review, pausing to think and try and find your not-so-secret stash of cigarettes. I have never seen you play non-stop for hours, playing with the same sort of passion you played with tonight. Hands, Holmes.”

“You’re my flatmate, not my doctor,” he tries, well-aware of how pathetic he sounds but not willing to concede the point just yet.

“I’m both. Mycroft had your files sent to the clinic, and weren’t those a treat. You do know that your medical records have to be kept more securely than anything else in the clinic? They brought a special safe and all.” John reaches under his chair, sliding out one of the medical kits he started keeping stashed all over the flat. Before Sherlock can do anything, John is perched on the edge of Sherlock’s chair, stripping the glove from his left hand.

John tsks over the bruises already forming on his fingertips, the darker lines from the strings crisscrossing and a split in the skin of one finger from his E string. There isn’t much he can do, not for bruises, and John clearly knows it as he takes more care with the cut on his finger than it necessitates. 

“It was never that I didn’t want you, Sherlock. It was that you left, spent all this time away without ever telling me you were alive, and I still hadn’t finished mourning you. So tell me, Sherlock, if you still want me, because I’m not playing these games again.” John finishes his ministrations, expanding his examination to Sherlock’s wrist- _too thin, still too thin, even for him_ \- with the old marks of their adventures and his time before John, familiar marks, and the newer ones. John unbuttons Sherlock’s cuff, pushing his sleeve out of the way.

John traces the line of old track marks up, two perfectly straight lines three-quarters of an inch apart, each mark in a line spaced half and inch from the one before it. They’re subtle, mostly hidden in the patina of miscellaneous scars across his skin. He doesn’t scar easily, but they are present in thin lines and pale blotches, barely a shade lighter than his natural skin color. He has led an active life, between chasing crime and running experiments. It leaves its marks.

He holds his breath as John lifts Sherlock’s hand, pressing a dry kiss to the inside of his wrist and the slim scar there, perfectly horizontal and placed orthogonal to the long bones of his arm. Until John moved in, Mycroft had surveillance in every single room after Sherlock tried that. The Dark Years, indeed.

“Breathe,” John reminds him, looking up for permission.

Sherlock strangles the breathless gasp, remembering that he has a perfectly good second hand and that the way John is propping himself up against the back of Sherlock’s chair can’t possibly be comfortable for his shoulder. Well, there’s only one thing to do about that, isn’t there? He snakes his arm around John’s far leg, yanking and twisting him into his lap, shifting his hips to settle John’s knees comfortably on either side. 

“Alright?”

John sits back on Sherlock’s knees. “I told you that first night. It’s all alright.”

Sherlock smiles, feeling the aching rift begin to seal itself again. His reply is automatic, unbidden, yet so incredibly perfect. 

“I know.”

And then, finally, he reaches out with his free hand, splaying long fingers against the back of John’s skull, and ever so slowly he brings him in for a kiss, watching John’s face for every single agonizing millimeter to close the gap. 

“Remind me why,” John forces out between languid kisses that drag out forever and fierce kisses as they try to take everything of each other into themselves, “ _remind me why_ we haven’t been doing this all along.”

“Because,” Sherlock rumbles, caught up in the here and now and the exquisitely detailed memories of their first case, that first flirtation that should have gone everywhere and ended up going into painful nowheres, “I never guess.”

John pauses, smiling against Sherlock’s lips, and lets his lips slip down to nuzzle behind his ear before he replies.

“Yes, you do.”

 

 


	34. The Plan Nobody Likes- Except Q

 

“Dinner?”

“Sounds lovely. Just us?” Cait taps her nails in a ripple of five clicks of acrylic-on-metal, smiling with that edge of not-sweet that begat her calling him Bones every day until he became R, instead.

“George is taking Danielle out to dinner, so just us. If you don’t count either James or Alec lurking in the back, of course, but maybe we can bring Amelia to give me a break.” Q frowns. “What do Double-0s talk about when they’re alone? Missions gone mad, their top three terrorist organizations, or how to destroy the supposedly-indestructible equipment we build for them?”

“Video games,” Cait tells him solemnly. 

“Video games,” he agrees.

On the other side of the Branch, over by the testing labs, there is the muffled sound of something going terribly wrong, immediately followed by the wail of the sirens and flashing lights. Q sighs, watching the isolation protocol fall into place, locking Q-Branch away from everyone else. 

“I’d best go deal with that before one of them breaks through the isolation gates and drags me away. Make reservations, Cait, and tell me where and when to show up!” He dashes across the Branch, trying unsuccessfully to focus on the crisis at hand and forget about that little voice that sounds remarkably like Alec and James. Needless to say, they don’t approve. He and Sherlock planned this, with help from Mycroft, Anthea, and John. MI6 would never let him use himself as bait.

Mycroft claims he has a Grandmaster in Moriarty’s side of their organization, a double-agent, who can help them. Q hopes so. That’s his best chance of getting out of this unbroken.

“Tell me that we didn’t lose the prototype of whatever exploded,” he starts with, striding up to the huddle of techs. “And make it quick. I figure we have twenty minutes before I get dragged away.”

His techs stare at him for one long moment, and then all begin talking at once. Q looks at his watch, sighs, and tries to get them into some semblance of order so he can know how far his plans were just set back.

 

***

 

“No.”

“Absolutely not!”

Q finishes replying to Cait’s invitation, accepting her choice of restaurant and thanking her for booking Amelia and one of the boys at a different table with a little explanation of how horribly overprotective they’re being, before looking up. James is still in his work suit, having stormed in after Q and shouted for Alec, who didn’t even bother wrapping a towel around his waist when he stepped out of the shower.

“Short-term, controlled danger is worth it for my long-term safety, isn’t it? John Watson and a group of officers from the Yard will be there with Sherlock, Mycroft will have his people in place and be watching CCTV footage in case anything happens. It’s the best option we have. One of you gets to be in the restaurant, and the other one can lurk somewhere outside.”

“No,” James repeats. Q cuts Alec off.

“If you say absolutely not again, I will shave your head in the middle of the night.”

“We’ll lock you in here,” Alec decides instead.

Q rolls his eyes. “You can try. I automated the entire security system a long time ago, which means I can override it.”

“We can tie you up. Handcuff you. Stop you from leaving.”

“You could,” he agrees, “if I hadn’t had Mycroft sweep the flat earlier and remove all of those. Speaking of my brother, he’ll be here to pick me up if you won’t cooperate, and I wouldn’t cross him. All you have to do is wait for Cait and Amelia to make their move, and when they do, we’ll have the manpower to arrest them and the proof of their betrayal. Simple.”

James and Alec fidget, knowing when they’re outclassed. Q is powerful within his own sphere, but there is no danger with Q, Mycroft, and Sherlock working together. It’s just a matter of time. And once Mycroft has Cait and Amelia in hand, he can use them to follow the threads and find Moran, find Moriarty, find their copycat terrorist.

And then they’ll take that vacation.

“I’m a better shot. I’ll find a good line of sight to the back door and guard there. James will stay in the restaurant with you.” Alec finishes toweling off his hair, and Q lets himself admire Alec’s _fine_ backside as he walks away. James glares at him.

“Can you ogle him when we’re not angry with you?”

Q shrugs. “A nice arse is a nice arse. We should never let him have clothes.”

“Oh, go ahead, say that loud enough so he can hear. I’d love to see M disembowel you when Alec walks in to MI6 in the nude.” James loosens his tie and unbuttons the button at his collar. “How horribly informal are you going to try to make me dress?”

“Try. It’s like you think I’m going to fail.”

James raises an eyebrow. “Do your worst.”

 

***

 

By the time James realizes that he and Amelia are at a different table on the other side of the restaurant, it’s too late for him to grab Q and run. Q winks at Anthea, sequestered behind her Blackberry at a little two-top table with the best sight lines in the dining room, and lets a little more emotion play over his face when he sees Sherlock slumped in the middle of the group from Scotland Yard, sitting plastered to John’s side and rather glum about their company.

“It’s lovely to have you back, Q. Danielle and I can run things for you, as heads of Weapons Tech and Defensive Assets. Maintenance basically runs itself and your group is so small.”

“Actually, I’m going to put Renee in charge of CSE so I’m not doing double-duty any longer.”

Cait considers for a moment. “She’s lovely, but are you sure you trust her?”

“Implicitly.”

“You are the boss,” she agrees, looking at the menu.

“Only when you and Danielle let me think I am,” he jokes back, though he now wonders how much of that is true, at least for Cait. 

Cait orders a glass of red wine and the fettucine alfredo. Q gets a Coke, preferring to keep his head and indulging his sweet tooth, and ravioli. Cait calls him a child over his choice of beverage and yawns.

“Sorry,” she apologizes, “it’s been chaos, trying to keep everyone on task in the wake of your little announcement. You really shouldn’t have told everybody, Q.”

Q blinks a few times, taking another big sip of his drink. He knows what she means, with the long days and his return. He’s exhausted, too, and the staff are sluggish today. His ravioli couldn’t come soon enough. Or a refill. Do they make Coke with extra caffeine?

“It’ll settle down,” he promises. Then frowns. “Well, as much as it ever does.”

Cait reaches across the table, and in an uncharacteristic gesture for her, grasps both his hands. “I certainly hope so. I’d love it to go back to before.”

And then people start passing out, slumping back in chairs and collapsing to the floor, faces in plates and cups tipped over. James leaps to his feet, tripping over them and collapsing, staring at Q helplessly before the strength sags out of him and he joins them in unconsciousness.

His eyes flick around as the darkness creeps into the corners of his vision, Cait’s hands tightening on his and then loosening all of a sudden as she loses her own battle against whatever drug is knocking the restaurant out. Sherlock is trying to get out of their booth, _long history with drugs more immune to the effects but not completely_ , trying to push past the slumped forms of the officers and John with limbs barely stronger than the noodles on his plate. Anthea managed to hide her Blackberry away and fall more gracefully than the others. Amelia is reaching for James, both unconscious now, and Q hears Sherlock’s calls for him as he, too, succumbs.

 

***

 

Consciousness comes in stages, one sense at a time, and he pretends that it hasn’t. There are voices around him, echoing around until he can’t pinpoint any sort of location relative to himself, and his shoulders already ache, strung up by his wrists as he is. It isn’t a position that allows him to feign unconsciousness for long.

Directly in front of him sits a chair in the shadows, a pair of polished black shoes glimmering with reflected light while the dark grey suit fades into the darkness around it. One foot lifts, crossing one leg over the other, and comes to a rest again below the armrests of the chair, where one pale hand stands out starkly against the dark leather.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s been quite a naughty boy,” the Black King- _Moriarty, he’s Moriarty, just a man and not a figure of terror, not that the consulting criminal is at all a reassuring abductor_ \- lilts, falling somewhere half-between a question and a statement. “Did you forget our last little lesson?”

Hands stroke across his hip from behind, circling the exact place where the brand sits on his hip, before moving up to his bared shoulder to trace the design there, following  the lines with a fingernail, then a whisper-soft caress to sooth the sting away. Q tenses, jerking away as best his bonds will allow.

“How rude! You know,” Moriarty sing-songs, “Sebby didn’t get to have very much fun last time, and the naughty little nameless boy didn’t obey his orders.” Moriarty stands and closes the gap between them, lifting Q’s face with two fingers and tilting his head sideways. From someone else, it would almost look like he were preparing to kiss Q, but from Moriarty it is something strange and inhuman. 

“Did you miss me?” Moriarty whispers, eyes comically wide, and then he throws himself back into his chair, laughing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wee bit short, but I never complain about a good stoppage point.


	35. An Artist's Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: This gets violent. It isn't what I consider really graphically violent, but it isn't fluffy bunnies and papercuts. If that bothers you at all, just contact me and I'll give you a summarized chapter. 
> 
> IGNORE THIS WARNING AT YOUR OWN RISK
> 
> This has been a PSA.

 

After twenty minutes of inactivity from Anthea’s Blackberry without an appropriate standby code, it will prompt her for a security code. If it does not receive the code within ten minutes of first prompt, her phone automatically sends Mycroft a text and activates a distress beacon. Q built that feature for her years ago, though she’s only ever activated it once- Mycroft surprised her at their home and it was horribly embarrassing when the response team arrived. 

It’s his only reassurance, that Mycroft has to have been alerted by now, if they had enough time to take him from the restaurant, transport him here, and string him up like this. Within the windowless confines of the warehouse, or old factory or something like that, it doesn’t matter when he can see so little of it but ominous shadows and his single pool of light, he has no idea what time it is and how long he was unconscious for. 

Mycroft is coming.

Nothing will stop Mycroft.

His shoulders ache, but it is no longer the building pain while he was strung up. He would rather be strung up, still, than kneeling in front of a chaise lounge with his hands tied to either arm and his legs tied to the chair behind him, a madman drawing on him with a Sharpie. Moran lurks just out of his sight, close enough for Moriarty to ask for  opinions. 

The marker is a chill drag across his skin, sharp where he switches to a fine-point marker, and he long-since stopped trying to visualize what Moriarty draws. If he knows where this is going, and he fears that he really does, he will have the rest of his life to see Moriarty’s work.

_Mycroft is coming, Mycroft is coming._

“What is it they say, Sebby, about the third attempt?”

“Third time the charm, boss.”

Moriarty giggles, and the marker digs in to the flesh between two ribs. 

“Whoops! I messed up,” Moriarty lilts, dragging out the syllables in his high-pitched sing-song. “Not that one, Sebby,” he growls, voice dropping back into deeper range. “The American one, about that sport?”

“Three strikes and you’re out.”

“That’s the one!” he calls, delighted. “This will be a little of both, Al-ger-non. One more chance to do as I tell you, to stay dead and remember who owns you. One last chance to do it right because this time, we are just going to play. Next time, I won’t be so forgiving.”

Moriarty drops the marker, letting it bounce and clatter on the concrete, and strokes his hands down Q’s back in a parody of sensuality, his touch to deliberate and too calculated and too terribly alien. Q shivers, and Moriarty pets him like a particularly obedient pet. 

“We’ll make you so pretty,” Moriarty croons, tracing the images he already drew, “my art and Sebby’s craftsmanship on such a delicate, delicate canvas. You took my other scars so well, Al-ger-non, and you make Daddy so happy. Such unblemished skin, apart from my marks, not like poor little Sherly, but don’t you worry.” Moriarty doubles over him, nipping at the shell of his ear hard. “I’ll share this with him, too, no matter how he’s such a poor copy.”

_Mycroft is coming, Mycroft will take Moriarty away and he will never get his hands on me again, never get his hands on Sherlock._

“And here I thought you were obsessed with Sherlock,” he says, as calmly as if he were discussing afternoon tea with Mummy.

“Oh, you all have your purposes. Mycroft, to play the big game. Sherly, to stave off the inevitable boredom. And you, Algernon, to make them both dance in my hand. Sebby, my marker.” He returns to his chair, adding even more details to the drawing. Q suppresses a shudder when he feels Moriarty crosshatching his design, almost thankful when he feels the burn of nail polish remover against his abused skin. 

Of course, that means Moriarty will start over. 

Again.

_More time for Mycroft to find me,_ he reminds himself, _more chance of escaping unscarred._  

It doesn’t help with the burn as Moriarty scrubs harder than he needs to at Q’s back, only avoiding the pawn on his shoulder. As not to mar the lines, his mind supplies helpfully. 

Moran feeds him, when they decide it’s time to eat, seating himself between Q’s outstretched arms and holding his jaw open while he gives him each bite, neatly preventing him from biting. Q doesn’t even try. He’s starved, his stomach long since having stopped rumbling but still feeling like it is trying to eat its way out of his body. He’s absolutely certain that if he bites, they will stop feeding him, and that is unacceptable.

He’s talked to agents after they’ve ben abducted, heard tales of that stage where they aren’t actively hurting their captives, but making them dependent for everything. It doesn’t quite get to Stockholm Syndrome, but instead makes the captives just that little bit more cooperative because they aren’t associating their captors with pain, just with giving them what they need.

He could fall in to that, were it not for those horribly acute sense memories of the smell of his own burning flesh, of trying to sit at his desk as a new member of the Branch when anything but laying flat reopened his wound, of Moran’s hand keeping him from bucking against the numbness and searing pain of the scalpel. He knows the pain is coming, and he knows they both get off on it, and that since Moriarty has already shown his face he will be a far more active participant. He already is.

It’s going to hurt.

_Mycroft is coming._

Moriarty crows with delight as he sketches out the boldest lines of his new design,  calling for approving noises from Moran.

_James and Alec will never allow themselves to be left behind. They wanted to kill them both before, now they will want to rescue me and torture Moriarty and Moran._

He doesn’t bother stirring when Moriarty drags down his pants, his trousers long-since destroyed to remove the trackers within them. The marker was already headed that way, and he doubts Moriarty wants to rape him. And if he does, well, James and Alec will kill him all the more brutally and do whatever Q needs from them to recover. It isn’t much solace, but it is the best he has right now.

“Perfect,” Moriarty proclaims, and Q closes his eyes. 

Here comes the pain.

And then two sets of footsteps retreat, the barely-there ghost of Moran’s steps a counterpoint to Moriarty’s dress shoes on the concrete floors, the measured steps of a soldier and Moriarty’s uneven, weaving steps. 

Q collapses into the couch as best he can, staring tightening his shoulders so he can bury his face in the cushions. Best to take his rest now, because he knows full well that once they return, he won’t be able to sleep comfortably for weeks on end, at least. 

_Mycroft is coming._

_Mycroft is coming._

_Mycroft is coming._

_Mycroft is-_

Moriarty giggles, the sound ricocheting through the cavernous space, and the steps return with the rolling of a cart, one wheel squeaking and protesting the whole way. Giggle, screech, tap tap tap, screech, all in tune with Moran’s stride. He can hear the scrape of Moriarty’s pirouette, and then he flops down across the couch in a move so terribly reminiscent of Sherlock as a child- _no, don’t go there_.

“You changed,” he comments, face now buried in a soft tee and what feels like denim and yet still his dress shoes against that arm. Moriarty sprawls, his hair gel an uncomfortable sticky sensation against his other arm while his too-sharp nails play with the skin of his forearm. 

“Westwood,” Moriarty replies, affronted. “Dry clean only, and I do so hate having a good dry cleaner murdered because of messy suits.”

“Well, I would hate to ruin your wardrobe while you’re torturing me.”

Moriarty scoffs. “Torturing? We went over this before, Al-ger-non. This is art, not torture.” He curls his free hand around Q’s chin, tilting his head back painfully to look at him with his head tipped and those fathomless eyes wide. “If I wanted you tortured, you’d break. And toys are no fun once they break, pet. But,” he shrugs, shifting his hand to limit Q’s breath just a little bit, “I have my fun, now Sebby gets his.”

At the first brush of Moran’s calloused fingers across the lines etched on him, Q tenses. He won’t be able to stop from screaming for long, but he’ll last as long as he can.

Moriarty is mostly indifferent, but Moran liked to hear him scream.

 

***

 

The initial cuts aren’t bad, a light tracery of scratches just deep enough to well up blood. He can’t tell that himself, but Moriarty is very keen on telling him. He just knows that Moriarty’s petting is something to focus on while Moran’s lines creep closer and closer to where the design trails down to the base of his spine, then across the opposite side of his arse from the brand. No sense antagonizing Moriarty, not when it won’t stop anything, not when it will take away one of the few things he has right now.

“Not too deep, Sebby,” Moriarty warns, “we want to do this right.”

Moran mutters something incomprehensible, but Moriarty pinches him, earning a sharper jab to start the next cut on Q’s back. 

If Moran is taking his time with this, with cuts where Q has hurt himself worse on a piece of paper, he’ll drag out the ‘fun part’ forever. 

_Mycroft is coming._

 

***

 

Q isn’t certain which hurts worse, the cuts over heavier muscle- his unmarked shoulder, his arse- or the cuts on the more delicate skin. Not that it matters. Moran hasn’t quite reduced him to screaming yet, but he doesn’t have to, not with Moriarty digging his nails into the fresh cuts, pulling the edges apart just to hear Q scream. 

And he screams and screams and screams, even when Moriarty pauses to check over Moran’s work, because once he starts there’s just too much to stop. By the time Moran is finishing the second pass of cuts, he is pressed up against Q to reach his shoulder, growing harder with every scream. 

“Sebby,” Moriarty commands when Moran finishes, “Sebby, come tend to me.”

Moran stands, stepping to the other side of the couch to wait for Moriarty’s instructions while Q tries to get himself back under control, screams trailing off into weak sniffles. 

“We can’t be forgetting to take care of you, though, can we?” Moriarty gives that mad smile and trails his fingers almost gently up Q’s spine. He slips off the couch, pacing around Q’s prone form. “We can’t have that marker staining your lovely scars dark. That would ruin everything!” He shouts the last word, and Q winces away from the pain.

Moran joins him, and Q hears the telltale crack of knees hitting concrete, only too familiar from mission comms, followed by the sound of a zipper. Q slumps, barely whimpering, and prays that Moran takes a long time as he hears the sloshing of liquid in a cup. Good. If Moriarty washes the cuts out, there will be a much lesser chance of infection with all this trauma. 

And then the nail polish remover trickles into his cuts, and he’s screaming and burning and _oh please, make it stop!_ Moriarty is moaning, and he doesn’t have the will or the mind left to deduce exactly what they’re doing but the more he screams, the more pleased Moriarty’s moans are. They didn’t do this before, _fire in his veins_ , and since they aren’t rubbing at all to get the marker up, Moriarty is going to do this again, and he knows how deep Moran cuts before _like he could ever forget it_ and he’s nowhere close to finished.

Stiletto heels are barely audible over his screaming and Moriarty and Moran both moaning, and until they come no closer he’s certain Eve has come for him, and it hurts even worse to have that fleeting hope of a reprieve torn away by nothing more than the sound of heels. 

“You called?” a woman asks.

“Imani,” Moriarty purrs, “It’s been too long.”

“Still the exhibitionist?”

“You used to appreciate it. Ah, there, Sebby, like that.”

The woman- Imani- scoffs. “Sebastian is quite a handsome man, but I don’t like mine broken.”

“You can go look at my toy, then, while Sebby finishes up here.” The clicking of heels grows louder as she approaches and his screams start to dwindle as he slowly goes hoarse. He doesn’t bother looking up, burying his face in the couch in an attempt to curl his spine upwards and make any residual nail polish remover trickle down off his sides rather than pooling in his cuts. 

“Looks just like the irritant that I had and lost,” she says, brushing his hair away to see his face better. She reminds him of a colder, hard-edged Eve with straight hair instead of curly, but the same sort of bold style. She’s also in her early twenties, so young to be so cold. If this isn’t the woman Sherlock described, he’ll be afraid to know that there are two such women in the world. 

“Sherly? He’s a slippery one, but that’s what makes him so interesting.”

“Well,” she releases Q, stepping away and leaving him to his pain and the barren landscape of his mind, “I have no taste for your barbarity, my King, just one for how you organize your criminal underworld. Keys, please.”

Moriarty sighs, and there is a jingling of keys and an exchange that he can’t see. Imani departs, and he realizes that she must be one of the White Grandmasters, to be this confident around Moriarty. Or insane, but Sherlock didn’t think she was.

_Focus on the puzzle,_ he tells himself. _I have more pieces than anyone else. Figure it out, and then take Moriarty down for good when Mycroft arrives._

And then James and Alec will drag him to Medical, get them to look over his back and teach them how to care for his wounds, and for once that sounds absolutely wonderful.

Be strong. He can be strong.

He has to be strong.

“Sebby, look how bored he’s getting! We can’t have that. Shh, it’ll be alright,” Moriarty coos as he takes his place on the couch again. “Sebby will take good care of you, make you all pretty. Shh.”

Q screams long after his vocal cords are shredded and his voice completely gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's hoping Moriarty is sufficiently disturbing!


	36. Imani's Secret

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry 'bout the wait- my internship is almost over so I spent the weekend packing instead of writing, like I normally would.

 

“Tell me a story,” he whispers to Imani after Moriarty decides that he would rather burn off their torture-high in a bed. She’s been guarding him ever since, for which he is thankful. Small kindnesses, and all that. She fed him with as much dignity as possible, given that he can barely move without disturbing the web of cuts that haven’t even started to seal over yet, and found a long straw for a bottle of water so he at least has control over something. She even tended to a few of the deeper cuts with antiseptic, hands shaking just in case Moriarty came back.

She said it herself, that she doesn’t have a taste for torture. 

“Why?” 

“Distraction.”

He feels her shift her weight as better to face him, and she considers for a long time. “I grew up in Detroit, in the heart of a city slowly dying and already half-abandoned by its people.”

Her voice lulls him into the sort of half-sleep he can manage now, aware enough of his injuries to not try and toss and turn, but dozing enough to make the pain a dull ache so long as he stays still. When hinges creak in the distance, he registers it- _not Moriarty, he likes to make an entrance_ \- before he thinks about it. Imani stops her story, halfway through illustrating the differences between accepting how life was in the projects for her junkie mother and how it is for her, now, as the heart of the criminal web. 

“I haven’t harmed him,” she calls out, “and without me, it would have taken you another week to find this place.”

“For that,” Alec replies, “I’ll spare your life. For now. Hands.”

Imani slides off the couch, and he can hear the click of handcuffs cinched tight. 

“I suggest you remove him quickly. Like all of his facilities, this place is rigged to blow. I don’t know if his desire to keep Mr. Holmes intact will trump his desire to see you all killed once he learns of your arrival.”

James must be keeping watch, Q decides, because Alec would never set down his weapon in the presence of a possible hostile just to cut him loose otherwise. He slides his body between Q’s body and the couch, cushioning Q’s weight as he collapses in a groan of pain. 

“I have you,” Alec murmurs, “but this is going to hurt.”

He nods against Alec’s collarbone, deciding that the stretch against the wounds on his back will hurt less than the words in his throat, and that if he starts making noise again he won’t be able to suppress a scream when Alec moves him. 

“I’m going to put you over my shoulder, Q,” Alec tells him, and then does it without waiting for a response. Q shudders with the pain, digging his teeth into his lip, but manages to stay silent.

“Off we go, ma’am,” James tells Imani, and takes her stilettos. The two of them pad silently across the floor, Imani quiet in her stocking feet, and deliver him to a discreet sedan. 

It’s all rather anticlimactic, he thinks, as the car pulls away, his face in Alec’s lap and feet in Imani’s, laying on his stomach and hoping that the driver doesn’t crash. 

“Anthea’s driving,” Mycroft assures them- well, him- from the front seat. He trusts Anthea.

“St. Bart’s,” Mycroft tells Anthea.

“Medical,” James insists, “they’re more discreet and nobody will question if the records of his treatment mysteriously get wiped.”

Q just wants to go wherever is closer. It’s cold in the car and he can’t exactly put clothes back on without making every single bump of the car worse than ever. 

“And so,” Imani resumes her story, “I decided that I would rather take whatever means necessary to find control on my own rather than be subject to the whims of others. With my options, that meant crime, and I eventually came to the attention of powerful people. Namely, the Grandmasters. And they both made me offers.”

“She took the hard route, but the right one,” Mycroft compliments. “Bond, take the cuffs off Miss Greene. Algernon, I’d like to introduce you to Miss Imani Greene, the White Queen and one of my Black Bishops. Miss Greene will be put in protective custody quite soon, as in rescuing you she played her hand and they are aware that she is associated with me now.”

After that, it just gets awkward. James and Alec don’t trust double agents, because they’re too often triple or quadruple or even quintuple agents, or in James’ case, sometimes they’ve flip-flopped so many times they don’t even remember who they actually support, which makes them exceedingly dangerous. Imani keeps telling her story about prejudice inside and outside of the criminal underworld against black people, women, and especially black women. She came from a not-great but not-terrible part of town, so much of the criminal underworld thought she wasn’t raised poor enough to be one of them and the outside world thought she was raised too poor to be one of them.

Someday, he’ll have to sit down and hear the rest of the story, because he drifts off again with James’ hand on his branded hip, steadying him, and Alec’s hand in his hair, the knots too tangled for him to actually stroke a hand through it. 

 

***

 

He wakes in Medical, surrounded by the soft beep of machinery, pale blue walls that Medical claims are soothing, and a surprising lack of people in his room. From where he lies on his stomach, enough pillows propped under his chest that he can sleep that way without hurting his neck from the sideways twist, he can see Sherlock perched in the windowsill and what looks like the top of James’ head resting on the edge of his bed. 

“Are you awake or are we pretending that you aren’t for a while?” Sherlock whispers, exaggerated enough for Q to read his lips even out of his mind on painkillers like he is. 

Q tries his throat and doesn’t like the strangled croak he manages, so tries his hand instead. It isn’t proper sign language, one piece official sign language, one piece the version he and Sherlock made up to irritate Mycroft as children, and the final piece making it up as he goes along when he hits things he can’t say without both hands or the rest of his body. Sherlock’s clever. He’ll figure it out.It only works because of the pain meds numbing him to little movements and using his shoulder that wasn’t carved open this time. For once, Moriarty’s previous two ‘lessons’ coming in handy, because he didn’t touch the wounds this time. 

Sherlock nods, returning to whichever medical textbook he bullied John into letting him have this time. It must be an old one, because Sherlock is giving it a liberal dose of his trusty red pen. Q still feels Sherlock’s focus on him, though, and when he raises his hand again his brother’s attention snaps to him. 

_Bet he likes that._ Q signs, hesitating on ‘likes’. Sherlock cocks his head, signs ‘appreciates’, and Q agrees. 

_He’ll bluster angrily for a while, but the books I correct end up in his office for admiration and reference._ Sherlock smiles, his real smile, and Q manages one in return. Their sign language isn’t really that clear, but he’s never been able to help but fill in Sherlock’s voice in between the general ideas they pass to each other. 

_Why isn’t he waking?_ he asks, barely waving towards James. He’s trained to wake at the drop of a pin, and Q seriously doubts he wouldn’t be on high alert after recovering Q. 

_We switch out every six hours, twelve hour shifts. When I switched with Mycroft, I brought a cup of coffee for him. Since the nurses said you ought to be waking soon, I may or may not have drugged it._

Q does his best disappointed Mycroft imitation, which usually serves to wither anyone in MI6’s arguments to dust but isn’t nearly as effective when he’s most immobile in a hospital bed with someone who has oft borne the brunt of the real deal. 

_Next?_ He’s wearying already, whether from his injuries or whatever they’ve dosed him with to keep the pain at bay.

_It just forces natural sleep. He’ll wake when 006_ \- easier to spell than Trevelyan, Q decides, after the initial shock of seeing Sherlock sign Alec’s code name- _arrives to replace him._

_And?_

_Up to you. Sleep._ Sherlock picks his book and pen back up, but watches Q instead for a little while. It helps, strangely. James and Alec would have been frustrated about their inability to do anything, Mycroft would want to coddle him and utterly deny doing so, Mummy would be in tears with Father trying to console her and restrain his own upset. Sherlock knows what he needs. So long as Sherlock is watching, just watching, he can rest easily knowing that no harm will come to him.

Not that sleep is much of a choice, with his IV drip dragging him under once again.

 

***

 

The next time he cracks one eye open, it is to Alec and Mycroft discussing something in hushed tones, a weight in what looks out of the corner of his eye like crimson silk that could be either Imani or Eve perched at the edge of his bed. Less than eighteen hours, more than six since he doesn’t know when in their shifts he woke up for. Not really a very good estimate. 

So. Half a day.

And a reduction in his painkillers, if that exemplary logic is anything to go by. Sherlock must have told them he woke up and the meds dragged him back to sleep. 

He owes Sherlock dinner. James can make it, since he doesn’t really want to tempt the restaurants of London after all this and Sherlock’s chemistry background makes him a better cook than Q. 

“Must be a good game of cards,” the voice that definitely belongs to Eve comments from the end of his bed, drawling it out in that bored tone that says they ought to be ashamed of themselves and doubly ashamed for not knowing why. 

“He’s letting me win this one, so yes. I swear, you count cards better than James.”

“Goldfish.” Mycroft delivers it almost coldly, but the corner of Q’s mouth twitches into an almost-smile and he hears Anthea laugh from somewhere behind him. Guarding the door, most like, if he knows his sister-in-law at all. 

“He keeps saying that, Eve,” Alec complains, “and neither Anthea over there, who you could take lessons in scary from, or bloody annoying Sherlock will do more than laugh.”

Eve shifts, moving one of his legs over to make more room for herself and patting his calf absently. “Boys, boys, you’re both idiots. I paged the nurse, Anthea moved to guard the door, and still neither of you noticed that Q is awake now.”

Mycroft tuts as Alec knocks over the card table, sending their game and his own empty mug to the floor while Mycroft swiftly rescues his umbrella and cup. Eve corrals the nurse when she arrives, dictating exactly what should be brought to Q for lunch, which tells him roughly the time, though he could have figured that out. Sherlock on the night shift, Mycroft on the day shift. Its crystal clear now that they would be more comfortable that way, and that James and Alec are adaptable enough to work either one. 

“Q,” Alec breathes, getting as close as he can and dragging calloused fingertips across Q’s face, tracing the lines of his eyebrows and his cheekbones and the surprisingly smooth curve of his jaw. 

_Who?_ he signs, because it would be ridiculous to expect that Mycroft, who was always brilliant with a gift for languages, hadn’t learned his and Sherlock’s private sign language and wasn’t just pretending not to understand because he dotes on them. 

“Bond,” Mycroft says. “Gave the hospital quite a scare when they came to check on you and found a man shaving an unconscious patient in his own bed with a straight razor. Sherlock, as you can imagine, was utterly no help at all.”

Alec looks over at Eve, and he her weight shifts again, most likely to shrug. Balance of probability and all those terms Mycroft tries to apply to what just makes sense to Sherlock and Q. And Mycroft, much as he’d rather see it as an exact science than a blend of memory and intuition and a excessive attention to detail. 

_Fish?_ he signs, hoping that Mycroft will interpret that properly as ‘goldfish’.

“Pirahnas, I would say, except they aren’t solo. Sharks, then. Best I can offer.”

_You approve._

“Appalling as it is to admit, I do. So long as my brothers,” Mycroft fixes a glare somewhere behind Q, “are happy and healthy and safe, the means are of little consequence. And John,” with a false smile, “share this with Sherlock at your own peril. With him, it is better left unspoken.”

_Your loss would break my heart,_ Q signs. It was the last thing Mycroft said to him before turning him over to MI6, before Moriarty ever got his hands on him. Be careful and be clever, because there is no room for mistakes and your loss would break my heart.

“You remember,” Mycroft sighs, age pressing down on him.

The room is quiet until the nurse returns with a tray that Eve immediately takes possession of, dictating who moves where until she gets to the simple problem.

He’s lying on his stomach.

“Q, you’re the only one conscious of your own pain levels. Would you rather have one of us feed you like this alone, a nurse feed you under supervision, or try to see if you can sit up with lots of pillows and your pain meds.” Eve gets off his bed, probably balancing the tray, and waits. 

_Sit up_ , he signs to Mycroft.

Mycroft raises an eyebrow and gives his best disapproving face. Q quails a little bit inside, but signs again at Mycroft. _Sit up._

Mycroft crosses his arms, still with the disapproving face.

He signs again, angrily this time, straining his injuries a little to add a bit of drama to the motions. Sherlock would be proud. Angry and irritated, more like, but with that twinkle in his eyes that means he secretly approves. _SIT. UP._

Mycroft doesn’t voice anything aloud.

“Well then. By his refusal to translate, I think we need to figure out how to roll Q over without disturbing his IV, and I think that means Mycroft will stand there, John and Trevelyan will stand guard over there, and the only people trustworthy enough not to bollocks it up will help Q.”

“Meaning?” Alec questions, because clearly he’s not thinking straight enough to count the people in the room and who was left out of Eve’s list.

“Myself and Anthea, of course. The only ones with any sense. Apologies, Q.”

_Accepted_ , he signs. This time, Mycroft translates. Grumpily, though only he and Anthea would be able to notice. 

It isn’t comfortable, getting settled on his back, but this time he has medical treatment. The first two times, he spent the weekend pitying himself and treating his own wounds, then bandaged himself up well, put on a big squishy cardigan, and buried himself in his work with a definite aura of ‘do not disturb’. The first time, nobody knew him well enough to want to approach him when he didn’t want to be approached. The second, they all assumed he was overwhelmed from the transition from simple programmer and occasional hacker to R.

He can manage.

Eve shifts the tray table to hover over his lap, filled with all his favorites that have probably been mangled by the hospital cafeteria and a steaming cup of what must be Earl Grey, because if it isn’t he and Eve will have Words. He cradles the cup with both hands, takes a grateful sip, and sighs almost audibly as the honey soothes his throat. Not usually his preference, but just fine right now.

He takes a deep breath, and forces the words from his throat, not willing to reply on Mycroft this time.

“Did you get him?”

The looks on all of their faces tells him everything he needs to know.


	37. Survivor, not Victim

 

The entire time he’s in the hospital, he never asks. 

Medical wanted to keep him there until he was completely healed, then send him on for psych evaluations. He told them, in no uncertain terms, that if they put any restrictions on his work pending psych eval, they would find out exactly how good his hacking skill are when he rewrites his own medical file and leaves no traces of tampering. And ruins their credit scores, just to be thorough. 

Even still, he convinces James, Alec, and Sherlock to break him out without Mycroft knowing. Mycroft’s suit was rumpled and he switched his umbrella for the cane-sword Mummy got Father for a birthday present one year, but otherwise pretended to be unruffled.

Even then, when Medical reluctantly allows him to shower without a covering on the slowly-healing marks, he doesn’t twist to look over his shoulder in a mirror, to see what Moriarty left on him. Not yet. 

He eats meals around the table, always with either James or Alec, usually both, and the frequent additions of others dropping by for James’ cooking, Alec’s extensive game collection, and Q’s rather quiet company. Quiet is good. Quiet means he isn’t showing everyone how much he wants to hurt Moriarty and Moran for all they’ve done, how much he wants them to suffer before they die, because he can live with what they’ve done to him but not with what they’ve done to his family and friends. 

They’d take him off the project, then, and Q’s determined that it will be his eyes that find them, his feet that stalk them through the crowds they hide in, his hands that won’t shake as he takes them apart.

Good thing he’s the Quartermaster, that all of the Double-0s and all of their equipment are his eyes and his hands and his feet, and he told James that on the very first day. Of course he causes more damage than a single Double-0. He is responsible for all the damage wrought by each agent under his guidance, for every piece of equipment that blows up a building or crashes a car or simply fires for one person and one person only, and then on top of that the damage he manages on his own with a computer. The only person who shares his burden is M, and it is a different kind of burden. 

M is the one who makes the call, who orders the deaths, whether directly by assassination or indirectly- ‘by any means necessary’. 

Q and Tanner are the assassin, one providing the plan and the other the means.

Everybody else is just a tool.

He stands before the full length mirror, taking in what everyone sees. The boffin, the pale lanky boy with the perpetually messy hair and scars hidden under too-big cardigans and clashing colors and patterns. He, who was always more openly emotional than either of his brothers despite his fondness for deadpan comments, looks as cold as Sherlock at the psychiatrist. 

He sees how John Watson looks at him, like he can’t reconcile what he should be seeing and what he is seeing. He sees James and Alec, with their worry and their hovering, afraid to touch him lest he break despite the fact that Medical confirmed not-as-privately-as-they-thought his shouts about not having been raped, so you can bloody stop acting like I have been. He sees Sherlock and Mycroft, their worry hidden but in their continued presence in his flat and their constant barrage of gifts, many of which don’t seem to have gone through the sanity buffer of John or Anthea. 

Sherlock started it off, bringing him the chess set, with pieces replaced in the right positions and glued in their exact places, which a man committed suicide over the unfinished game between him and his estranged lover. John cringed when he saw it and marched Sherlock into the bathroom for a talk about boundaries. Everyone giggled at the euphemism and shouted ribald jokes until the door clicked shut and John launched into a well-rehearsed and oft-repeated lecture.

Mycroft, the next night, brought a compilation of the best moments from the few MI6 dinner parties they had thrown in their flat, filmed by what is clearly Q’s own cameras and the footage stored on the MI6 servers from his own videos shared with the coworkers involved. Q sent a very terse memo about trusting other government agencies, especially without consulting him or CSE in Q-Branch first, with any of their records at all.

Sherlock brought him live petri-dish art, which John promptly binned and Eve got out the cleaning chemicals Q didn’t even know they owned, yanking elbow-high yellow rubber gloves on with little regard for how they clashed with the sultry print of her dress. Q took pictures and thanked Sherlock for the blackmail material.

Mycroft brought him the hard copies of the personnel files for Bond, James and Trevelyan, Alec. The unedited versions, which are supposed to be so classified that absolutely nobody has access to them, with so much of the Double-0s’ pasts now state secrets. 

Sherlock brought the stuffed dragon Mycroft slept with before either of them were born, long since banished to a shelf in his old room at Mummy’s. 

Mycroft brought albums of photos from their childhood, with all the embarrassing photos of Sherlock included and all the bad ones of both himself and Q redacted.

Sherlock brought a rather confused Mummy.

John and Anthea got more and more worked up with each exchange, defending their significant other’s choices while implying that the other is being childish for continuing, and Q was generally amused by how quickly it became less about him and more about proving each other wrong, the way it always was as children.

Mummy ended it, putting both Sherlock and Mycroft in time-out, which he is absolutely making hard copies of that footage because that’ll be blackmail material _forever_ , and giving Q a big box of welcome-home chocolate, chocolate chip cookies, and a bottle of wine that met James’ standards before sitting at the head of their table and generally ordering everyone around. _Their table is round_ , James whispered in disbelief, _how could she possibly find the head of a perfectly round table?_

_It’s Mummy,_ he answered, and went back to helping Alec find the corkscrew because Alec is rarely allowed in the kitchen anymore after he put tinfoil-wrapped snacks in the microwave, but Mummy assigned him the wine. Eve, at the other end of the counter, is helping John pack leftovers into balanced portions with an air of utter indignity and pretending very poorly not to laugh at the sight of James washing the dishes.

The company is fine. Nobody expects too much from him then, he muses, drifting back to those memories and solidifying every detail in his memory. It’s the alone time, when James and Alec aren’t sure how not to treat him like spun glass, when he wants to scream and break things. He does, a few times, but it doesn’t make him feel better even though they’re collectively rich enough that even breaking the Xbox isn’t a travesty since Q backs up all their save files on the server he set up here after the first time Alec held a Call of Duty competition and someone shot the Xbox, back before he moved in. 

They’re watching a movie now, on a quiet night without any guests, and this time he sits at one end of the couch with his laptop while James sits stiffly at the other, Alec lounging on the floor with all the popcorn. He tried cuddling up earlier, which didn’t go well. 

Q shuts his laptop with a quiet click, sliding it into a designated laptop shelf underneath the coffee table, as not to be confused with the miscellaneous electronics shelf or James and Alec’s shelf. They’re labeled and, like all the the shelves in the flat, color-coded. Tastefully color-coded. Q wants to redo them with patterns instead of colors. It might be a little less noticeable and Eve was laughing. 

James tracks him as he gets up, retrieves the duvet from their new, bigger shared bed, and drags it past what used to be his bedroom and is slowly becoming a mix between his server room and their guest bedroom, with only a screen between the two, and returns to the couch with it wrapped around his back. James visibly relaxes when Q’s back in arm’s reach, and they return to the movie. Q realizes with a start that they must have just switched to Shrek. James is a little too stone-faced and Alec is already giggling. 

He settles on the easy target and launches himself onto Alec’s back. 

Alec, in a move Q’s seen a thousand times on his comms, twists under Q’s weight, putting them face to face and grasping Q’s face with both hands, the better to seduce or to break his neck. When he notices what he’s done, he freezes, and James is an invisible coiled spring. 

“Q?” he questions, turning his grasp into a caress, trying to play it off as if he always meant it that way. 

When he drops down to kiss him, Q has the distinct pleasure of having caught Alec completely by surprise. He returns to the couch when he’s certain he has their attention.

“Moriarty didn’t break me,” he begins, “and I’m proud of it. Don’t let him change anything, please, and do tell me if he did. I don’t want to be waiting on a return to normalcy, our kind of normalcy, that’s never going to happen.”

He waits for confirmation or denial, but they’ve clearly chosen Option Two as far as Double-0s tend to be concerned. When pressured, either talk a lot but give nothing away in hopes of finding a way out, or say nothing at all and observe.

Q’s good at dealing with either option. Growing up with Sherlock prepared him well for this job, little as he expected growing up with Sherlock to prepare him for anything productive. 

Option Two? They’re expecting him to tell, so show, not tell. 

He strips efficiently, caring little for the show. Not this time. 

“This mark,” fingers on his left hip, two pairs of sharp eyes following the line of his joint, “was given to a frightened boy to cow him into being nothing more than a programmer, nothing more than a tool for MI6. And it almost worked. Were I not quite as brilliant, quite so talented in a field Boothroyd had little to no help in, I might be just another nameless minion today.”

He reaches over his shoulder, not turning, but placing his hand on the old mark on his right shoulder, on the pawn. “And the plan changed. Boothroyd wanted to name Cait to R, but she refused and put me in her place. Moriarty’s machinations, I have to imagine now. And yet, they came to me again. Be a tool, be nobody, be useful and maybe they won’t throw you away. And I was strong, but I didn’t go hunt them, I let Mycroft do that.”

Silence. They know where it’s going, and they don’t like it. He gets up and stalks to the windows, replaced with one-way glass for safety’s sake through it makes indulgences like this nice. He stands nude at the window, staring out across London. 

“This time, we strike back. I strike back. This time, Moriarty has gone too far, and the victim becomes the survivor. I survived Jim Moriarty.” He laughs with only a touch of hysteria, which is better than expected. “How many can say that? Sherlock, I suppose, but he never really wanted to hurt Sherlock the way he wants to hurt me. And here I am, healed. Unbroken. I can draw every line of the other two, and yet I only ever give them the most cursory of glances any more. I don’t even know what this one looks like.”

“Scars,” James says. “Neater ones than bullet wounds leave.”

“Three parts,” Alec says, hesitating before he pads across the floor to Q, the moment solemn against Donkey’s insistence that everybody likes parfaits. It almost helps to center him in reality, after a life filled with Sherlock’s theatrics and the drama of the Double-0s while he sips tea behind a computer screen, untouched. His life isn’t drama and theatrics and sexy assassins and martinis- shaken, not stirred. The world does not cease to turn because he has a point to make, it doesn’t even bother pausing the movie.

Pause, not turn off, because much as he denies it to either of his brothers he really does like Shrek.

_Focus, Q!_

Alec touches his left shoulder, splaying his palm across it with the lightest of pressure. “Here, it’s a spiderweb, all narrowing down to here.” He follows diagonally across Q’s back until it reaches almost to his spine, slowly lifting his hand and drawing his fingers together to delineate the edges. “There’s a spider here, connected to the web but perching on your spine.” 

Q nods, eyes closed and head tipped forwards to imagine, letting him visualize it for the first time, replacing the trace of Alec’s fingers along freshly healed wounds over Moran’s scalpel and Moriarty’s marker. Now, once they’re healed, if he could only get them to trace the marks with their tongues, claim them as his own rather than a stain left by a psychopath. 

“On the other side, starting between the spider’s legs, it’s a tangle of roses. All with thorns, Q, because we all know you love pretty yet dangerous things.” Alec drops a kiss to his nape, followed by James as he joins them at the window. “They curve off here and here,” Alec traces the line down his back, trailing off at his tailbone, while James traces the one that wraps forwards around his hip, effectively finishing framing his arse cheek. 

“And between them?” It better be pretty, he decides, and resolves never to tell Psych that he thought that. Moriarty wanted it perfect, so there were sections carved and sections where apparently cross-hatching wasn’t good enough and Moran peeled off a bit of skin. 

“A butterfly, one wing ragged and the other cracked and broken.”

“Well,” Q says, stretching his arms out and back like he hasn’t for so long with it healing, “points for trying, I guess.”

“Only you,” one of them whispers, he doesn’t care when it’s a sultry whisper with the other felting his fingers, “would give a criminal mastermind ‘points for trying’.”

“Equal opportunity genius,” he manages, only sounding slightly occupied with far more interesting pursuits with his face against the cool glass, and then he gives himself over to not thinking at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive the pause exactly where none of you wanted it, but this one was already almost long enough so I figured I'd give you this tonight before I fall asleep.


	38. Seduction and Sentiment

 

The glass is smooth and cool against his chest, an unyielding force against his burgeoning erection, a sharp contrast against the furnaces wrapped around his back and sides. James and Alec are not small men, and he’s rather narrow, their sides pressed up against each other to press as much clothed skin as possible against his back. 

He presses back harder, relishing the scratch of the buttons against his back, the near-pain against his new scars completely different from the cold burning of the scalpel or the insistent, lingering pain of the nail polish remover in open cuts. It is a pain of his own choosing. Not one he intends to linger on, but pleasant for a moment.

“Bed,” he demands, pushing back against them both before collapsing against the window, drowning in sensation, cool glass and warm hands, fingers tracing lines he cannot see and the ridge of his ribs and then he’s being lifted into a pair of arms and cradled to a chest. Q lets his head loll back against a shoulder, reaching up with one hand to slide up to the shirt collar _loose Alec creaking door James_ finding a heartbeat and staying there, letting it bring his senses back to grounded. 

Narrowly missing the doorframe, Alec stops in their bedroom, supporting his head to see James already lying across the bed, already nude, gloriously golden and striped with pale scars, a softness in his eyes at odds with 007, just for Alec, just for Q. Even when he’s seducing, he’s never kind and soft. He’s imperious, a force of nature- no, a force beyond nature, a force of man’s deepest desires all wrapped up in a single handsome package, the utterly human wanting. Wanting success, wanting things, the wants that all acknowledge, as well as the more visceral in his profession- wanting the ferrous tang of blood, wanting the snap of bone and the resistance of sinew to his knife. The violent coupling of enemy agents burning off energy, the sweet seduction of an informant, the bored sex of those who know the game and play it anyways. 

He’s watched them all often enough, watched his agents and even his now-lovers seduce men and women alike with an apathetic passion, feigning fascination in the same tired lines as always and the same pitiful acceptance with which fools swoon into their arms. He prefers it when they do not try to kill them post-coitus, but James and Alec both voted that it was more interesting the other way. 

“I do believe,” he injects as much of his professional calm into his voice as possible, “that you are a tad bit overdressed for the occasion, 006.”

“If my Quartermaster demands it,” Alec agrees, tossing his shirt simply because he can and Alec can’t live without a mess. 

“Let’s not go there,” James argues. “Since I’m not an exhibitionist who gets himself banned from honeypot missions, I’ve had enough of the ones who sleep with me just because I’m an agent. Call me 007 in bed, Trevelyan, and you know what I’ll do.”

“Am I exempt?” Q asks.

“You, M, and Eve will allow me to do a lot more to Alec than M, Eve, and Alec will allow me to do to you for the same. I’ll just make your tea with slightly too much sugar for a week or so.”

“You’re a cruel master, James Bond.” Q tips his head to look at James, eyes widening when he sees the smile curving James’ lips. Alec slips on to bed on the other side of him, grasping Q’s wrists against his heart as James’ hands drift over his ribs, down the too-skinny curve of his belly, and sideways to where he’s most ticklish. 

“No.”

James’ fingers dig in, and he _writhes_ like he hasn’t since Sherlock nicked his first pair of handcuffs and cuffed him to his own bed while he slept, tickled him until he was threatening to call Mycroft when he could draw breath, and then left him there for Mummy to free because he got bored. Alec shifts under him, holding his wrists in a single hand to fit him against his body, holding him terribly still for James’ awful, awful fingers, and if James thinks he’s getting anything more than a water pistol on his next mission, he’s going to be disappointed. 

James’ hands disappear, and he tenses, waiting for the next attack. He’s watching, but he can’t do aught more than watch and the squirming does nobody any good but Alec. Besides, James is lightning fast when he chooses not to move with a sort of lazy grace, so stillness means little. 

When he dives down, Q squeezes his eyes shut and holds all of his muscles as still as possible, which makes the kiss almost a surprise. 

Perhaps a water pistol that he can load with acid, he decides as James’ tongue takes possession of his mouth, Alec sucking marks of his own into the meeting of his neck and his shoulder in what will be a slowly-fading garnet necklace. Painless marks, pleasurable marks, they’ve left dozens on him before and he’s left near as many back. 

He could button his shirt up all the way, hide them behind his collar, but he’s more inclined to show them off here at home, at least as long as Alec keeps nipping just a little, just the way he likes it, a little rough with a lot tender and above all, overwhelming.

Alec’s abs tighten and he undulates, rubbing his erection against Q’s arse, releasing Q’s hands to snake a hand between his legs and stroke the delicate skin of his perineum, venturing occasionally to circle his rim or hold his balls, and all the while James restrains himself to slow kisses, drugging kisses. James sprawls sideways, one hand on Q’s ribs and the other on his cheek, doing all the work of supporting him so he has naught to do but luxuriate. 

They give. They take. And they no longer restrain him at all, their grasps supporting but not preventing aught at all. 

His choice. 

“More,” he gasps, breaking away from James for just long enough to cut off the syllable into something resembling a word, more than a sound drawn out into a moan as Alec applies a little more pressure to his next circle, a dry hint of his intentions, a tease that leaves him pressing back into Alec and eliciting a moan from one of them- or is that both? 

“James,” Alec gasps, and James pulls- no, throws himself away with his near hand left at Q’s side, his entire focus splitting between Alec’s irritatingly still hand, holding, just holding, hot and perfect and not nearly enough, and the warmth of James’ fingers just barely touching.

James scrabbles in the bedside drawer, tossing a gun- make that two- and a pack of playing cards and a knife before flinging a half-empty bottle of lube at Alec’s head and, with his impeccable aim, earning a grunt from Alec. 

“Come here, Q,” James tells him, opening his arms. Q whines, deep in his throat, as Alec thrusts against him slowly, then pushes him towards James. 

He falls pliant in James’ arms, seeking kiss after kiss after kiss, their passion undeniably present but slow, the slow approach of the incoming tide rather than the rush of wave after wave, battering him down. James takes his weight, supporting him entirely by the hands on his shoulders and Q’s knees on either side of James’ hips, and they kiss.

He doesn’t know for how long they kiss, letting Alec watch and occasionally make himself known with a hand on his flank, fingers dragging down James’ throat, hot tongue up the dip of Q’s spine where his back bows into James’ chest. 

“I told you, Q, before we returned here to a mess not of our own making, what I wanted to do to you. And we’ve been on edge for so very long, with having you stolen from us and rescuing you and the awful anxiety as you recovered, as we saw more of the Algernon you show us in those photos and less of the steely control and sharp wit of the Quartermaster. Our Quartermaster. And you’re back now, truly back, and I want, oh Q, I want.” Alec presses a kiss to his back, just above the curve of his arse, and then pulls away again, leaving only the twining miasma of Alec’s words stirring something hungry inside of him. 

Q twists, trying to seek Alec out, but James drags him back down to his seduction by increments, letting Alec be an invisible force in the room, and Q knows somewhere in that part of his mind that isn’t given over to _more oh please I need more_ that Alec likes this, he likes making Q squirm without touching him, without even letting him rut at the sheets or James’ stomach for the contact. 

“Look at James. Our whole lives, dedicated to Queen and Country. Military service. MI6. James especially has almost died a hundred times in the line of duty, and he’s never thought about leaving.” The ‘except for with Vesper’ goes unspoken, hanging in the gaps between words. They don’t talk about Vesper, but she lingers in the unspoken places in a way James and Alec’s many conquests in and out of the line of duty don’t.

“Never,” James confirms in a hot rush of breath against Q’s lips, bending his knee to hook his foot around Q’s knee, inching it backwards until he understands and collapses against James’ chest, wriggling to put their cocks in contact, movement almost too dry to be comfortable since Alec is in control of the lube, which really was a dangerous choice on James’ part.

“He’d leave for you. We both would. And we know you’ll never ask because you’re just as devoted to MI6, to ensuring the safety of our country and all it entails, as we are.” Alec sounds satisfied, then snaps the cap on the bottle of lube. 

“Terribly unsexy, Alec, talking about duty to Queen and country when you’re supposed to be helping me prove I’m not so easily broken.”

“I think you’re a little too talkative,” Alec trails a slick finger along James’ side, flicking it inwards along the line of muscle at his groin, “and a little too coherent. Luckily, James can take care of one, and I the other.”

“Making good on your promises, Trevelyan?” James drawls as Q slithers down his chest, scooting up to curve his shoulders up on to the headboard and watch. The bed dips as Alec settles at the foot, and Q can imagine the predatory look in his eyes as he watches. 

Alec likes to watch near as much as he likes to talk, riling his partner up with the smoky roll of his words and the positively filthy images he’s giving them, and Q’s seen it both in their own bed and on his comms. James, on the other hand, revels in the visual. Sharply dressed figures with exquisite bodies litter his history, and watching almost kills him unless he gets to participate with stroking hands and murmured appreciation, feather-light kisses and gentle presses of teeth. 

Q knows how to play with that. He settles back on his knees, almost a return to his position from earlier with his chin resting just on the inside of James’ hipbone, back arcing up in what isn’t the most comfortable of positions but is highly visual, displaying his lanky frame to best advantage. He’s flexible. Best take advantage of it.

He drops his eyes away from James’ steely gaze, laving the line from James’ hipbone to his cock, pausing to enjoy it one of the few completely unscathed areas on his lover. For all that can be said about James’ romantic history, his ‘truly magical lovemaking’ has spared him several threatened maimings when his bed partner got the jump on him in the morning. Nonsensical logic, but that seems to be the pattern of everyone James gets sent to hunt down. 

He nuzzles James’ inner thigh one more time, making eye contact again as he rubs  the head of James’ cock against his lips, moving away to lick down the underside before returning again, making it as visual as he possibly can without actually giving him what he wants, and just watches the tension grow, never breaking eye contact. James’ fists clench and his breaths come slower and deeper, deliberately measured, which is him managing to keep control by the last shreds of his willpower. 

“Remember what I promised you?” Alec asks, hands coming down on Q’s hips, thumbs stroking just off syncopation with each other across his arse, slowly ever so slowly.

“Yes,” James breathes raggedly, sinking deeper into the pillows Q left piled up there from last night, on his laptop while they slept on either side of him. “Please, Q, enough teasing.”

James makes a strangled moan, trying to suppress it when Q closes his lips around the head of his cock, flicking his tongue out to dip into the slit and taste James, bitter and a bit salty, just like Alec told him he would be, and then swirls his tongue around and does it again.

“Oh, _fuck_ , Q, if you do that again I will fuck that pert little mouth of yours,” he babbles, sucking in a deep breath and breaking off in a moan. 

“Next time, maybe,” Alec says, curling his fingers to get a better look at Q’s arsehole, blowing a hot breath over it and down to his balls, “but for now, use one hand at the base of his cock. I know I said I wanted to see you deepthroating him, but that can wait. I’m going to make you lose control, a live conduit of pleasure, taking all I give you and giving it back to James until the both of you are utterly wrecked, and then I’ll take my own.”

Q wraps his hand, tightening each finger individually and loosening them again, a ripple against James’ cock that he can maintain for ages, and takes James down until his lips meet his hand. He hums on his way up, letting his hand follow him just a bit, and then he finally gives James just the tiniest bit of suction with a twist of his wrist and James’ head thunks back against the headboard with a gasp that may have been garbled English or may have been Polish and he’s not quite sure which because Alec drags his tongue across his arse, and suddenly he knows exactly where this is going and he’s going to be putty before Alec ever lets him come.

He pulls away, crying out when Alec flattens his tongue and pushes against him, and Alec withdraws immediately.

“Stop before James comes and I stop. James can tell you how lovely it feels to have someone swallow their moans around your cock, to have someone coming apart and still devoted to your pleasure.”

“You’re sadistic, Alec Trevelyan.”

“Turnabout is fair play. I’ll teach you what magic you can wreak with a well-placed vibrator and I’ll even let you rebuild one to your own specs.”

“Don’t give him ideas,” James hisses, and Q doesn’t know whether that’s directed at him or at Alec, but he wants Alec’s touch back and James fists the sheets when he returns to his cock, lower back coming off the bed and eyes squeezing shut. 

Pleasure thrums through his veins, making his legs go weaker until Alec is supporting him with an arm around his stomach, holding him still while he tries to squirm- towards the pleasure or away from it, he doesn’t know, it’s all-consuming and overwhelming all at once. Alec slides two slick fingers in, returning his attention to Q’s rim, and Q’s hand slips and he takes James deep against the back of his throat anyways, trying to moan but for his lack of breath, and James starts swearing in something definitely not English but Q honestly doesn’t care enough to figure out what, not when it’s such a delicious stretch, and it’s too soon and agonizingly slow before Alec adds a third, twisting them and his body to mouth at Q’s balls.

When James comes, it is a cessation of noise, a whiting out of the background which Q recognizes before he tastes anything, and he works him through it gently until he winces with oversensitivity and slides down to pull Q up his chest and kiss him senseless again, raising a hand. The lube bottle lands in his palm, and he slicks Q’s cock and his own stomach.

“Too much,” Q complains, because he likes a little bit of friction, not just the easy slick of this much lube.

“No,” James tells him, “it isn’t.”

One of Alec’s hands braces by James’ head, and despite his preparation it is a delicious stretch as he slides inside, bracing the other hand to hold himself steady when he seats himself fully, holding Q still with his own weight. James is steady, soothing and grounding, while Alec pants in his ear, waiting for his word.

He doesn’t hold out for long. He can’t, not really, not when they’ve spent aeons working him up and he knows it won’t take long, not with Alec’s fingers tightening on his hip while he tries not to move and the slight shifts in pressure as James breathes. 

“Move,” he whispers, then a little louder, “Alec, now!”

“I thought you were going to make me wait forever,” he hisses, breath whooshing out as he draws back, thrusting back in hard enough to slide Q against James’ stomach, and he buries his head in James’ collarbone to bury his moans again and again. James sucks on the marks Alec left earlier, darkening them, near-gentle while Alec buries his teeth in the nape of Q’s neck, driving one last time into him before his hips jerk uncontrollably. The bite, the last piece of stimulation, drives him over the edge and he spills onto James’ stomach, going boneless into his soft caresses, completely cocooned by his lovers, and he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Alec is the one who draws away first, pulling out and manhandling Q on to his back so he and James don’t get stuck together, taking a long moment to look at the both of them before fetching a cloth from the bathroom.

“The both of you, all a mess, and all by my hand.” Alec’s voice is a satisfied rumble. “Gorgeous. Utterly gorgeous, just like this.”

“Save the sweet-talking for later,” James mumbles, already drifting off to sleep.

“Later, then.” Alec strokes Q’s hair back from his forehead, pressing a gentle kiss there, and tucks him under the covers once he’s cleaned him up. “I’ll make sure everything is locked up and secure, and then I’ll be here. Rest, now.”

“Don’t be long,” he asks, curling against James’ side and feeling the sweet ache when he moves, the good kind of hurt. 

Moriarty thinks him a broken butterfly, he thinks as he dozes off to the steady thump of James’ heart. He’s not even capable of knowing how dreadfully wrong he is.

 


	39. Long Live the King

 

As clever as Moriarty is, Q tracks him rather quickly. 

After all, Moran is not near as careful, and even once they go separate ways, Moran keeps in touch. Their plan is quite simple, yet effective. If either one of them raises the alarm or fails to make contact at a pre-determined irregular interval, the other will go to ground and immediately go after MI6. With Moriarty’s connections or Moran’s skills, it is a fearsome possibility. 

“Whatever means necessary,” M told him, with Eve looking only slightly menacing over his shoulder and Tanner completely bland and overlooked as a danger on his other side. 

“License to kill, sir?”

“This time, Q, do not fear the end of your quite promising career in espionage. Make an example of what happens to those who dare attack our Quartermaster.” M inclines his head, dismissing Q. “Whatever means necessary. And Bond, Trevelyan? Please leave enough pieces for us to identify, and preferably not scorched. I do hate relying on DNA records alone and mincemeat is hard for the PM to stomach.”

“Yes, sir,” Bond answers, with none of the backhanded respect he oft delivered to the old M when she gave him orders. His respect is not won easily, but his reasonably-questioning but still his acceptance of Q’s word on the Cait issue meant more than anyone could have predicted. 

In his office, he has a file containing all of the transgressions he’s discovered so far, all the little betrayals. The deleted information, the missions failed under suspicious circumstances, the tip-offs about MI6 plans.

His kidnappings.

Maria Isobel Delacroix.

That’s the oldest one that he’s certain of. Not long after Amelia Elles’ appointment to 002, the botched tech delivery in London with a sniper cost Maria Isobel Delacroix, R at the time, her life. He went back through 002’s mission record- well, Elles’ mission record. She’s been stripped of her title, just as Caitlyn Verne has been stripped of her rank within the Branch. 

There was no verifying protection from sight lines, definite proof she was being followed that was ignored, several complete oversights ignored because R had been overseeing her mission and nobody went into her notes out of grief. 

“Trevelyan.”

“Yes, Quartermaster?”

An idea begins to form in his head, the best way to tackle this mission, and he needs to act quickly before Moriarty moves again. “Tell M that I require Meeting Room Three, Tanner, and Eve. Bond, sweet-talk Catering into sending me refreshments on short notice. Yes, you may put the order in my name. I’ll be there once I stop by my office.”

Both of them get that stubborn look that means they’re contemplating disobeying him, despite the fact that he’s made it abundantly clear that at work, they’re Bond and Trevelyan at the most familiar and 007 and 006 on mission. Work is work and home is home. They, of all people, ought to understand. At home, he expects fidelity. At work, not so much. 

“That’s an _order_ ,” he snaps, stalking off towards Meeting Room Three. He waits until he’s around the corner before reaching for his earpiece.

“Q to Renee de Sinque, Danielle Marsh, and Lucas Aurelius. Over.” The habits from Boothroyd’s time are too deeply ingrained to ditch now. Besides, it is a good system, he won’t deny that.

“Danielle, over.”

“Aurelius, over,” Lucas shouts over what sounds like metal grating on metal. He doesn’t question Maintenance. They don’t have much to maintain, so they end up doing a lot of the testing for Weapons Tech and Defensive Assets. 

They like explosives almost more than the Double-0s. 

“Pied Piper, over.”

“I need all of you in Meeting Room Three for a presentation on dealing with Moriarty. Over.”

“You’ve had time to make a presentation? Last we talked, you didn’t even have a plan. Over.” 

“No faith in our esteemed leader, Danielle?” Lucas shouts again, a few of the syllables lost to machine gun fire and what may be a tank, but he’ll never ask because he really doesn’t want to know. 

“Meeting Room Three,” Q reminds them. “Q out.”

He mutes his earpiece. They can ping him if somebody needs his attention.

Now, he has a Power Point to write. Everybody likes Power Point, right?

 

***

 

Catering arrives with several trolleys of food, Bond, a straitjacket, a blender, and a funnel. Elena sets up the tables, humming to herself, and Joe smiles at Q and reaches for the blender. 

“Anything but the blender,” he says, perfectly calmly. Joe’s health smoothies are legendary because when he decides someone needs one, they’re going to drink it no matter what. One of the Double-0s developed a strawberry allergy and still drank one of Joe’s smoothies. He was an agent who didn’t like killing, but is still a good hand with a straitjacket. 

“Two of Elena’s sandwiches, a glass of milk and two of water, and a bowl of soup. It’s chicken noodle or chili, your choice. No choice on the sandwiches.”

He pretends to deliberate, but Joe isn’t convinced. “Chili, but the sandwiches have to be roast beef.”

“One roast beef, one chicken salad.”

“I don’t like chicken salad.”

“Elena,” Joe calls across the room. “Two roast beef sandwiches and chili.”

“What about the chicken salad? It’ll help put some meat on those bones.”

“Next time,” Joe promises, giving Q the evil eye.

He really shouldn’t be afraid of Joe’s threats to feed him up, not when he’s preparing to send agents to take down a master criminal, a genuine psychopath who has had Q at his mercy thrice, but _Joe could deny him brownies._  

No competition.

By the time Joe is satisfied with his meal and Elena has given everyone who wanted one a cup of tea and given everyone else whatever they ordered plus a cup of tea, he has an entire room of senior staff and Double-0s waiting on him.

“Two operations,” he begins, “running simultaneously. We need to get them both, giving them no time to go into hiding. That means stealth and a distraction within a distraction. Bait, you might say.”

The Double-0s, as one, give him their predatory smiles, a little too delighted at the prospect of rampant destruction to facilitate assassination. Well, intentional rampant destruction rather than a side-effect of their job that gets them lectured.

Q leans against the podium, dangling the remote in one hand. “Settle in, everyone. This is going to take a while.”

 

***

 

“Bond, have you made contact?”

“Affirmative.”

Irina Romanov, Russian ballerina and one of Mycroft’s Grandmasters, returns to the stage looking unruffled, but that is part of her trade. Bond saunters out to his box, surreptitiously scanning the crowd while looking enthralled by Irina’s performance. From the outside, it looks like any other intel-gathering mission.

To Moriarty, it will ring of the beginnings of a plan, sending Bond and Trevelyan to meet with Mycroft’s Grandmasters. After all, who else would Q trust? He’s not really known for letting others get close to him. 

Which is exactly what Q wants him to see. 

“004, I said the bomb was for _emergencies_ ,” Danielle scolds on the other side of their control room. They sit at either end, Renee too new and Lucas too out of touch with field work to reasonably be allowed to run priority missions. 

The screen on the left side of the middle row, 004’s screen, explodes into color that has Danielle rapidly shifting their camera to a different one. Close enough to Moran to make him act, far enough to not seem deliberate. Moriarty likes drama. Q can play subtle. 

Well, as subtle as setting off bombs in Kabul can be. 

For him, that is fairly subtle. 

M stands between him and Danielle, pacing without actually rising to the indignity of pacing, just checking both of their work over their shoulders despite the fact that he doesn’t ever run missions like that. He leaves that to them, unlike his predecessor. 

Q’s pawns edge closer, intriguing enough for Moriarty to see it, transparent enough not to worry him. That’s his problem, of course. He wants to be clever. He wants everything to be so clever, and it isn’t always. Sometimes the bluff within a bluff within a bluff just ends up being a simple solution veiled in the delusions of the recipient’s mind. 

Neither of them check on the agents who are marked on leave, approved by Medical, who jumped through all the paperwork hoops to make it seem utterly genuine. 

And now they wait, guiding their active missions and trusting their people.

 

***

 

If Sebastian Moran allowed himself one indulgence when away from Moriarty, it was women. The prettier the better, women whose eyes glinted when they saw his scars, who flirted with danger and embraced that all he would offer was a good rough fuck and maybe, for the right set of tits, a drink afterwards to toast to their magnificence. 

And more is always merrier, and twins merriest of all. 

After all, he never lets his guard down, and if the boss siccing a gang of angry thugs on him for fun- or that Golem fellow to test his skills, or even an American assassin who left the most lovely scratches down his back before he snapped her neck for pulling a gun- well, if they couldn’t even incapacitate him, nobody else stands a chance. 

When he felt cold metal pressed against the back of his neck by one of the lithe blonds he waylaid in the bar, he only sighs and tightens his hands in a threat against the other woman’s neck, just enough to impair her breathing and remind the first one that shooting him would kill her, too. 

He didn’t even have time to crush her windpipe before she dropped a miniature Taser out of her sleeve and pressed it to his side. 

“Why didn’t you kill me?” he croaks when he comes to, tied and duct taped and handcuffed to a four-poster bed that definitely isn’t his crap motel that the boss insisted was perfectly safe, though a total turnoff for most of the women he wants to have. While the boss is away, Moran gets to play, right?

One of the twins gives him a smile with too many teeth. “Somebody else wants to have that pleasure. Two somebodies, in fact.”

The other one leans in close. “I hope you like knives.”

“And cross-hatching. He was very particular about the cross-hatching.”

“And don’t forget the nail polish remover.”

“Not sure I have any, 005. I suppose we’ll have to settle for regular acetone instead.”

“For shame, 009. For shame.”

The sit on either side of his bound limbs, dividing their knives- a rather expensive set, and he really does have to admire proper craftsmanship on a few of them- between themselves. 

“Thought you were waiting for someone else,” he spits out as the first hot line of pain sears down his ribs.

“To kill you, yes,” one quips, twirling her bloodied blade before sinking it into the mattress between his legs, nicking things that he really prefers left alone and has a suspicion will not be. Not the type of play he had in mind for the night.

“Nobody said we couldn’t have a little fun, first,” the other agrees, short little artistic slices circling closer and closer to one of his nipples. 

“They do take such an awfully long time to go anywhere, don’t they?”

“Oh, positively eons. Whatever shall we do?”

He screams when they start cutting in earnest, screams till his voice gives out and then finds an entirely new level of screaming while every rasp of air against his ragged throat burns worse than the heaving of his chest opening and reopening new wounds as they drip their acid. 

He knows a lost cause when he sees one. 

He’s almost grateful to see the little Holmes’ fuck buddies/bodyguards/whatever show up, ready to die like he hasn’t been since the first time the boss held a gun to his temple and fucked him raw and he knew he’d die for this man if he asked it or even when he didn’t. 

“You know,” Lyra comments to Viola while they go to find new clothes for Bond and Trevelyan, “I’ve heard a lot of people threaten to rip someone’s beating heart out of their chest, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before.”

“They do keep their promises,” Viola grins, turning to her twin. “Never a boring day around here.”

Lyra raises her hand to her earpiece, connecting them back to the MI6 grid. “Quartermaster, this is 005 reporting in. 009 and I can confirm elimination of the target.”

“Confirming elimination. 005, 009, any possible chance of survival or resuscitation?”

“None whatsoever, but I would suggest not looking at the verification photos uploaded to the mission drive.”

“Affirmative, 009, 005.” Q’s voice softens, just a little. “Tell 006 and 007 to check in, if you would.”

“Affirmative, Q,” they chorus. “Over and out.”

 

***

 

“I have to say,” Moriarty tells the man waiting for him when he flicks the lamp on, “you weren’t who I was expecting. This is lovely. Well played.”

“I hope you do not mind that I already poured your brandy. Sit, Mr. Moriarty, and have a glass with me.”

Moriarty takes the seat across from the old man with the pleasant smile, pale skin stretched taut across bones and veins, the very picture of fragility. His hands do not shake as he sips from his glass.

Moriarty’s don’t, either. It isn’t poisoned. That would be so terribly cliche of them, and so utterly boring as well. And he would be so very _disappointed_ in the little pawn if he were that boring. 

He would so hate to be bored.

“I assume you have a tape recorder? I would like my last words.”

“Shall I summon the priest, as well?”

“No, no,” Moriarty drawls them out, “I’m to dance in Hell, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. No, no priest with his last-minute desires for repentance and pity in his eyes. Boring.”

The man retrieves the tape recorder, setting it up with one hand and pressing record. “Alfred Frederic Johansson, Agent 001, with the last words of target James Moriarty, known primarily by aliases Richard Brook and White King. Go ahead, Mr. Moriarty.”

“Assuming that you’ve killed by Sebby,” Moriarty begins, “I would like to name my successor to my title in the Grandmasters as the one who bears my mark, the one who came the closest to beating me. So much more amusing than your brothers, wanting something you could never have. Because that’s what you wanted, freedom, and that is my last act, to deny it to you forever.”

Moriarty reaches inside his jacket, taking a small bottle with a pink-spotted pill from his inside pocket and holding it up to the light before swallowing it.

“The King is dead,” he crows, “Long live the King.”

Alfred watches the man collapse, scratching at the arms of his chair and choking for air that isn’t coming, fading into a sprawl of limbs in a bespoke suit. 

“Pardon me for disturbing your performance,” he tells the corpse, drawing a thin wire from the end of his cane and wrapping it around his cooling throat, “but best to be certain. I haven’t survived this long by being careless.”

He twists, wire parting flesh like so much putty, and clicks off the recorder when Moriarty’s throat gapes like his last delirious smile.

“001, reporting in to the Quartermaster,” he tells his microphone, settling back into his chair across from the corpse to finish his drink. He flexes his fingers, feeling the arthritis he’s been hiding from Medical, feeling every one of his eighty-five years. He’s the last of his contemporaries, outliving even Mawdsley and Boothroyd, when they both expected to hear him breathe his last over the radio one day. He’s getting too old to keep garroting his targets. 

“001, this is Q.”

“Confirming the target, one James Moriarty, as deceased. Cause of death is some sort of drug-induced suicide, confirmation received via garrote. Mission successful.”

 


	40. Until Next Time

 

Eve doesn’t even wait for M to sign the papers before demanding souvenirs from their vacation. They’re going to the Canadian Rockies, one of the few picturesque places where neither James nor Alec have chased some sort of terrorist or foiled a nuclear bomb threat or any of the other frankly ridiculous missions they find themselves in on a near-daily basis.

It’s lovely, even if Alec takes to hiding his laptop in more and more unlikely places with every passing day to keep him from hacking into the MI6 servers ‘just to check on things’- ‘no, Q, you know Renee will catch you and then Eve might shoot James again’- ‘oh, thanks for looking out for me, Alec, I’m _really_ feeling the love over here where you tied me to a chair because I _didn’t make eggs the way you wanted them_ ’. 

They hike to see glaciers and alpine fields and lovely clear lakes made of ice melt. James and Alec carry their daypacks, if rather unusually stocked with enough weaponry to take down a moose, or so they claim. Q’s heard that moose are a little tougher than that, but James and Alec seem certain, so at least they’ll keep one busy for a while if they do somehow end up against a rogue moose. Can’t be more terrifying than internationally renowned assassins, right?

He hopes right.

On the ninth day, Imani tracks them down in a restaurant in town, joining them at their booth despite how James bristles and Alec pretends not to see Q kick him in the shins. 

And then it clicks.

“Why are you here?” James hisses.

“We are sort of supposed to be on vacation,” Alec adds. 

“You have bigger problems than me invading your vacation, boys,” she tells them, and Q bursts into laughter that is only a touch more than a little hysterical, if he’s honest. 

“You mean that’s actually how it works? You need to fix that.”

“You can.”

“Q,” James warns in the voice that usually precedes a _talk_. 

“I’m not exactly the type to lead the criminal underworld,” he argues.

Imani shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. Your orders?”

“Just…” he sighs. His life just can’t be easy, can it? “Just leave us alone. I’ll contact you when I need you.”

Imani stands. “Of course. For your information, my dismissal from one of the Grandmasters is pending agreement between the Kings.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” he grumbles, earning a surprised look from James and a pleased one from Alec.

Imani nods and takes a backwards step away from their table, not stumbling a step in her high heels. She didn’t ever move to take her coat off. She never expected to stay.

“Until next time, White King.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, thank you for coming all this way with me! I never expected this little idea of mine to expand quite this much or for people to leave such lovely comments!
> 
> At the moment, I have some rough plans for a Part Two, though I have a few other little ideas that need their time on my keyboard first. To see what's coming up next for me, come and visit me at http://nagapdragon.tumblr.com/. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this or just to chat, you know, for kicks and giggles.
> 
> I promise I don't bite. 
> 
> Much.
> 
> Anyways, thank you for reading, and I really hope that you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing this!


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